Asking or Telling – Real-time Processing of Prosodically Distinguished Questions and Statements

Abstract

We introduce a targeted language game approach using the visual world, eye-movement paradigm to assess when and how certain intonational contours affect the interpretation of utterances. We created a computer-based card game in which elliptical utterances such as "Got a candy" occurred with a nuclear contour most consistent with a yes-no question (H* H-H%) or a statement (L* L-L%). In Experiment I we explored how such contours are integrated online. In Experiment 2 we studied the expectations listeners have for how intonational contours signal intentions: do these reflect linguistic categories or rapid adaptation to the paradigm? Prosody had an immediate effect on interpretation, as indexed by the pattern and timing of fixations. Moreover, the association between different contours and intentions was quite robust in the absence of clear syntactic cues to sentence type, and was not due to rapid adaptation. Prosody had immediate effects on interpretation even though there was a construction-based bias to interpret "got a" as a question. Taken together, we believe this paradigm will provide further insights into how intonational contours and their phonetic realization interact with other cues to sentence type in online comprehension.

Effects of prosody in processing speaker commitment in French

“…After the end of the Object constituent (where the nucleus was located), fixations on the target picture exhibited a sharp increase. This is in line with a previous study in American English, which have shown immediate use of the nuclear accents and boundary tones for processing questioning vs. asserting utterances [16].…”

“…The present study used an eye-tracking task to test listeners' online responses to prenuclear contour. Studies have reported an anticipatory effect of prosodic prominence [15] and the effect of boundary tones to elicit assertions vs. yes/no questions judgments [16]. However, the stimuli of [16] were limited to less typical syntactic constructions of American English (elliptical utterances only containing the nucleus).…”

“…Studies have reported an anticipatory effect of prosodic prominence [15] and the effect of boundary tones to elicit assertions vs. yes/no questions judgments [16]. However, the stimuli of [16] were limited to less typical syntactic constructions of American English (elliptical utterances only containing the nucleus). The current study presents long utterances contrasting degrees of commitment (assertions vs incredulity question) with pictures showing the corresponding facial expressions.…”

Children's and adults' perception of questions and statements from terminal fundamental frequency contours

“…In addition to the terminal cues that distinguish declarative questions from statements, pre-terminal cues and nonmelodic prosodic cues, which vary across languages, are also available (Face, 2005;Fal e and Faria, 2006;Heeren et al, 2015;Haan, 2000, 2002;Van Heuven and Van Zanten, 2005;Vion and Colas, 2006). In fact, a gating task with word-length increments revealed that pre-terminal cues enable English-speaking adults to differentiate naturally produced declarative questions from statements after hearing the first word (Saindon et al, 2017).…”

Intonation in the processing of contrast meaning in French: An eye-tracking study

“…Online processing of intonation in contrastively focused elements has been studied mainly in stress-accent languages such as English or German, revealing that speakers use pitch accent location and pitch accent type to create online expectations about an upcoming referent [7]- [12]. In [9], participants first heard a sentence like "Put the candy/candle below the triangle" and then a sentence like "Now put the candle above the square", where 'candle' could either be accented or deaccented.…”