Editing Paralanguage (section)

=== Linguistic aspects ===
Ordinary [[phonetic transcription]]s of utterances reflect only the linguistically informative quality. The problem of how listeners factor out the linguistically informative quality from speech signals is a topic of current research.

Some of the linguistic features of speech, in particular of its [[prosody (linguistics)|prosody]], are paralinguistic or pre-linguistic in origin. A most fundamental and widespread phenomenon of this kind is described by [[John Ohala]] as the "frequency code".<ref>Ohala, J. J. (1984) An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F<sub>0</sub> of voice. ''Phonetica, 41'', 1–16. {{doi|10.1159/000261706}}.</ref> This code works even in communication across species. It has its origin in the fact that the acoustic frequencies in the voice of small vocalizers are high, while they are low in the voice of large vocalizers. This gives rise to secondary meanings such as "harmless", "submissive", "unassertive", which are naturally associated with smallness, while meanings such as "dangerous", "dominant", and "assertive" are associated with largeness. In most languages, the frequency code also serves the purpose of distinguishing questions from statements. It is universally reflected in expressive variation, and it is reasonable to assume that it has [[Phylogenetics|phylogenetically]] given rise to the [[sexual dimorphism]] that lies behind the large difference in pitch between average female and male adults.

In text-only communication such as email, chatrooms and [[instant messaging]], paralinguistic elements can be displayed by [[emoticon]]s, font and color choices, capitalization and the use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters. Nonetheless, paralanguage in written communication is limited in comparison with face-to-face conversation, sometimes leading to misunderstandings.