Additives pitching in: L*+H signals ordered Focus alternatives

Abstract

Approaches to the meaning of intonational contours differ in associating each subcomponent with a meaning that remains invariant across contours or treating a contour as contributing its meaning holistically. This paper argues for a common core of the L*+H pitch accent across two intonation contours, the Rise-Fall-Rise (RFR), and a novel contour coined the Downscale-Contour (DSC). Both contours are analyzed as indicating the presence of an alternative with respect to a scale inferred from the QUD, but differ in the relative strength of this alternative, with the DSC indicating a weaker and the RFR a stronger one. Each contribution is derived compositionally from the meaning of additivity and exhaustification respectively.

On a concessive reading of the rise-fall-rise contour: contextual and semantic factors

“…Finally and most crucially, the extent to which the RFR ameliorated the penalty was larger in dialogues where the context utterance was negative and the carrier utterance of the RFR contributed a positive counterpoint compared to dialogues with a positive starting statement and a negative counterpoint. This last pattern is evidence for the valence asymmetry observed in Göbel (2019) and the argument made in this paper, namely that there is a concessive reading of the RFR alike to at least.…”

“…The goal of this paper is to substantiate the tension between uses of the RFR as in (1) and its prior characterization empirically and explore relevant factors by presenting three auditory rating studies. We argue that there are in fact distinct uses of the RFR that resemble an ambiguity of the English Focus-particle at least, and support the proposal by Göbel (2019) that the RFR indicates the presence of a higher alternative on a variable scale. The structure of the paper is as follows.…”

“…A follow-up question to this argument, mentioned in Section 2.3, is what makes this reading of the RFR available. A relevant hint in this regard comes from the fact that the prior literature has mostly focused on uses of the RFR in replies to questions or out of context, whereas Göbel (2019) and Experiment 1 investigated replies to (value) statements. A possible contrast between questions and statements is furthermore in line with intuitions and may thus be expected to contribute to the choice between an "epistemic" and a "concessive" reading of the RFR.…”

“…4 For Constant (2012) and Wagner (2012), it is equally unclear why (6a) should leave alternatives open but not (6b), and for Westera (2019) there is no obvious difference in terms of the secondary QUDs (6a) and (6b) give rise to either. The solution Göbel (2019) proposes is that the RFR indicates that there is an alternative that ranks higher on a given scale, essentially borrowing from ideas present in prior accounts. Let's again imagine a goodness scale that goes from pure evil on one end to pure virtue on the other, illustrated in Figure 1.…”

Embedded Rising Declaratives and Embedded Quotation

“…Intonational tunes (at least some of them, and at least in English) contribute meaning in terms of discourse phenomena like speaker commitment, without altering the truth-conditional semantics of the sentences they accompany. For views on a broader variety of English intonational tunes than just monotonically rising terminal contours, see Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg (1990); Bartels (1999); Constant (2012); Kraus (2018); Göbel (2019); for views on intonational meaning outside of English, see Truckenbrodt, Sandalo & Abaurre (2008); Bhatt & Dayal (2014); Prieto & Borràs-Comes (2018).…”