Do Persian Native Speakers Prosodically Mark Wh-in-situ Questions?

Abstract

It has been shown that prosody contributes to the contrast between declarativity and interrogativity, notably in interrogative utterances lacking lexico-syntactic features of interrogativity. Accordingly, it may be proposed that prosody plays a role in marking wh-in-situ questions in which the interrogativity feature (the wh-phrase) does not move to sentence-initial position, as, for example, in Persian. This paper examines whether prosody distinguishes Persian wh-in-situ questions from declaratives in the absence of the interrogativity feature in the sentence-initial position. To answer this question, a production experiment was designed in which wh-questions and declaratives were elicited from Persian native speakers. On the basis of the results of previous studies, we hypothesize that prosodic features mark wh-in-situ questions as opposed to declaratives at both the local (pre- and post-wh part) and global level (complete sentence). The results of the current study confirm our hypothesis that prosodic correlates mark the pre-wh part as well as the complete sentence in wh-in-situ questions. The results support theoretical concepts such as the frequency code, the universal dichotomous association between relaxation and declarativity on the one hand and tension and interrogativity on the other, the relation between prosody and pragmatics, and the relation between prosody and encoding and decoding of sentence type.

The Role of Prosody in the Identification of Persian Sentence Types: Declarative or Wh-question?

“…3 The main pitch accent in BP falls on the last word of the sentence by default (Gebara, 1976). 4 As a preliminary step, we need to know whether the prosodic characteristics we found in the production experiment (Shiamizadeh et al 2016) are perceptible by Persian native speakers. Therefore, we conducted this simple perception study before running a gating experiment.…”

“…In a previous study, Shiamizadeh et al (2016) compared prosodic correlates of wh-in-situ questions and their declarative counterparts. They found that a higher level of pitch register, a higher F0 onset and a shorter duration distinguished the pre-wh part in wh-questions from declaratives.…”

“…The sentences produced in an earlier production experiment (Shiamizadeh et al 2016) were used as the materials of the current experiment. To control for the potential effect of gender on the listeners' performance in the perception experiment we chose both a male and a female speaker.…”

“…Twenty pairs of sentences elicited from a male and a female speaker in the production experiment by Shiamizadeh et al (2016) comprise the stimuli of this experiment. The structure of the wh-questions and declaratives is illustrated in (3) and (4) Subject is abbreviated as Subj, adverb as Adv, animate direct object as ADO, inanimate direct object as IDO, adjunct of time as AdjT, adjunct of manner as AdjM and adjunct of place as AdjP.…”

“…Journal of Psycholinguistics . In Persian wh-in-situ questions, the interrogativity device (the wh-phrase) does not move to the sentence-initial position, and the pre-wh part is characterized by specific prosodic correlates (Shiamizadeh et al 2016. Do Persian native speakers prosodically mark wh-in-situ questions?…”