MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences - Cryptome

etween the agent and the world (see INFORMATIONAL SE-
MANTICS). One may explain the content of the representational
states of an agent in terms of the way those states tend
to vary systematically in response to states of the environment.
A state of a person or thing carries the information
that P if the person or thing is in the state because of the fact
that P, and would not be in the state if it were not the case
that P. The strategy is to explain the content of representational
states in terms of the information that the states tend
to carry, or the information that the states would carry if
they were functioning properly, or if conditions were normal.
The information theoretic strategy will give determinate
content to representational states only relative to some
specification of the relevant normal conditions. A central
task of the development and defense of the informationtheoretic
strategy is to give an account of these conditions.
A third strategy—the linguistic strategy—is to begin
with linguistic representation, and to explain the content of
mental states in terms of the content of sentences that realize
the mental states, or of sentences to which the agent is
disposed to assent. One version of this strategy, defended by
Jerry Fodor (1987) among others, assumes that propositional
attitudes are realized by the storage (in the “belief
box,” to use the popular metaphor) of sentences of a LAN-
GUAGE OF THOUGHT. Another version takes a social practice
of speech as primary, accounting for the contents of beliefs
in terms of the contents of the sentences of the public language
that the agent “holds true,” or to which the agent is
disposed to assent. Donald Davidson (1984) has defended
this kind of strategy (see RADICAL INTERPRETATION). The
first version of the linguistic strategy needs a distinction
between explicit or “core” beliefs and implicit beliefs,
because it would not be plausible to say that everything
believed is explicitly stored. The second version has a problem
explaining attitudes with content that is not easily
expressed in linguistic form (for example, perceptual
states), and it seems to conflict with the intuition that
thought without the capacity for speech is at least a possibility.
Both accounts need to be supplemented with some
account of what it is in virtue of which the relevant kind of
linguistic representations have content.
See also COMPOSITIONALITY; FOLK PSYCHOLOGY; GRICE;
INTENTIONAL STANCE; MEANING
—Robert Stalnaker
References and Further Readings
Barwise, J., and J. Perry. (1983). Situations and Attitudes. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Burge, T. (1978). Individualism and the mental. Midwest Studies in
Philosophy, 4, Studies in Metaphysics. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Crimmins, M. (1992). Talk about Belief. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Davidson, D. (1984). Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D. (1987). The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Dretske, F. (1988). Explaining Behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Field, H. (1978). Mental representation. Erkenntnis 13: 9–61.
Prosody and Intonation 679
Fodor, J. A. (1987). Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in
Psychology of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Quine, W. V. (1956). Quantifiers and propositional attitudes. Journal
of Philosophy 53: 177–187.
Richard, M. (1990). Propositional Attitudes. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Salmon, N., and S. Soames, Eds. (1982). Propositional Attitudes.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stalnaker, R. (1984). Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stich, S. (1983). From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The
Case Against Belief. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Proprioception
See AFFORDANCES; IMITATION; SELF; SENSATIONS
Prosody and Intonation
The term prosody refers to the grouping and relative prominence
of the elements making up the speech signal. One
reflex of prosody is the perceived rhythm of the speech. Prosodic
structure may be described formally by a hierarchical
structure in which the smallest units are the internal components
of the syllable and the largest is the intonation phrase.
Units of intermediate scale include the syllable, the metrical
foot, and the prosodic word (Selkirk 1984; Hayes 1995).
Intonation refers to phrase-level characteristics of the
melody of the voice. Intonation is used by speakers to mark
the pragmatic force of the information in an utterance. The
alignment of the intonation contour with the words is constrained
by the prosody, with intonational events falling on
the most prominent elements of the prosodic structure and
at the edges. As a result, intonational events can often provide
information to the listener about the prosodic structure,
in addition to carrying a pragmatic message. The term intonation
is often used, by extension, to refer to systematic
characteristics of the voice melody at larger scales, such as
the discourse segment or the paragraph (Beckman and
Pierrehumbert 1986; Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg 1990;
Ladd 1996).
The primary phonetic correlate of intonation is the fundamental
frequency of the voice (F0), which is perceived as
pitch and which arises from the rate of vibration of the vocal
folds. The F0 is determined by the configuration of the larynx,
the subglottal pressure, and the degree of oral closure
(Clark and Yallop 1990; Titze 1994). Articulatory maneuvers
that change the rate of vibration of the vocal folds also
affect the exact shape of the glottal waveform and hence the
voice timbre (or voice quality). Perceived voice quality is
probably used in perception to assist in the identification of
intonation patterns (Pierrehumbert 1997). Intonation is not
the only source of F0 variation. Speech segments also have
systematic effects on F0. However, the largest segmental
effects are on the time-frequency scale of the smaller intonational
effects. Thus, F0 contours can be roughly viewed
as a superposition of segmental factors on the intonationally
determined contour.
Many experimental studies show that prosody affects all
aspects of the speech signal (see Papers in Laboratory