PREMISELE UNEI DESCRIERI ACUSTICE A RÂSULUI ÎN DISCURSUL SPONTAN. DELIMITĂRI TIPOLOGICE ȘI TERMINOLOGICE

Abstract

Laughter is a complex, multimodal phenomenon that has been investigated across a variety of disciplines and documented for multiple languages. Yet for Romanian, empirical research is scarce and no detailed acoustic description is currently available.
This article aims to address this gap by offering the first integrated theoretical, terminological, and acoustic account of laughter in spontaneous speech based on Romanian data. Building on the classification proposed by Truong, Trouvain, Jansen (2019), the hierarchical structure of laughter (i.e., episode, bout, subbout and pulses) is described. The study showcases a wide range of laughter forms, from speech-synchronous events, speech-laugh and smiled speech, to voiced and unvoiced outputs produced with either an ingressive or egressive airflow.
Each type is illustrated with examples from the Ro-Phon corpus, with corresponding audio files accessible via the phonic.ro platform. The significance of this present work lies in two key contributions. First, it provides the foundational terminology and typology needed for a systematic study of laughter in Romanian. Second, it offers high-quality acoustic information that will facilitate cross-linguistic comparisons, allowing Romanian data to be directly contrasted with findings from other languages. It is hoped that this first account will stimulate further research on laughter in Romanian, fostering comparative and interdisciplinary studies that shed light both on language-specific as well as languageindependent characteristics of this complex phenomenon.