Initial Pitch Cues in English Sentence Types

Abstract

Previous research has revealed that English speakers can differentiate between questions and statements after hearing an utterance's first pitch accent [1]. This suggests that initial F0 cues distinguishing questions from statements are present in the input. We examined this proposal by analyzing the first pitch accent in statements, absolute yes/no questions, and declarative questions. The production of these three sentence types was elicited from 10 Canadian English speakers who performed a sentence-repetition task. Results revealed that statements were produced with an initial H*, whereas both question types were almost exclusively produced with an initial L*+H. Statements were also produced with an earlier peak alignment, and a smaller F0 change. No differences were observed between absolute and declarative questions. The results are consistent with the stimuli analyzed in [1], and provide further evidence that initial pitch cues mark sentence type in Canadian English.

Perception and Production of Sentence Types by Inuktitut-English Bilinguals

“…Whereas statements typically end with a falling contour, declarative questions end with a raising contour (e.g., Pierrehumbert 1980;Bartels 1999). Rising contours are also characteristic of absolute questions, at least in Canadian English, the variety studied here (Hedberg and Sosa 2002;Hedberg et al 2017;Patience et al 2018). Second, statements and questions not only differ in their realization of nuclear contours, but there is increasing evidence suggesting that, in Canadian English, questions (both AQs and DQs) are marked by a different initial pitch accent when compared to statements (L+H* vs, H*, respectively) and by a higher pitch peak (Saindon et al 2017b;Patience et al 2018).…”

“…Rising contours are also characteristic of absolute questions, at least in Canadian English, the variety studied here (Hedberg and Sosa 2002;Hedberg et al 2017;Patience et al 2018). Second, statements and questions not only differ in their realization of nuclear contours, but there is increasing evidence suggesting that, in Canadian English, questions (both AQs and DQs) are marked by a different initial pitch accent when compared to statements (L+H* vs, H*, respectively) and by a higher pitch peak (Saindon et al 2017b;Patience et al 2018). In this sense, English would resemble a wide variety of languages that mark interrogativity with a higher initial pitch when compared to statements (Face 2007;Petrone and Niebuhr 2014;Sicoli et al 2015).…”

Utterance-Initial Prosodic Differences Between Statements and Questions in Infant-Directed Speech

“…The O' Shaughnessy (1979) study suggests that prosodic information is available in multiple places across the utterance although the end of the utterance is the most common location (e.g., Bartels, 1999;Hedberg et al, 2004;Ladd, 2008;Ladefoged & Johnson, 2010). More recently, a production experiment shows utterance-initial differences between Canadian English statements and both yes/no and declarative questions (although no differences between the two question types), with statements demonstrating a higher initial pitch accent, earlier pitch peak alignment and smaller F0 change (Patience, Marasco, Colanton, Klassen, Radu & Tararova, 2018). These studies show that prosodic cues have been observed in multiple locations throughout the sentence in the production of sentence types, and in some instances can be used to distinguish between statements and questions.…”

“…For example, gating studies with adults have demonstrated greatest accuracy in sentence type discrimination when the final rise is present or absent (Dutchvan Heuven & Haan, 2000;French -Vion & Colas, 2006), though accuracy begins to increase more rapidly roughly halfway through the sentence (e.g., 60-65% of Dutch listeners could accurately identify sentence types when a phrase was truncated right before the second accent and increased to 80% accuracy when the phrase included the second accent; van Heuven & Haan, 2000). Recent perception studies demonstrate that the prenuclear region (often the first word) provides sufficient cues (e.g., pitch accent height, pitch peak alignment timing and F0 change; Patience et al, 2018) for adult listeners to distinguish between statements and questions (Canadian English - Saindon, Trehub, Schellenberg & van Lieshout, 2017;German -Petrone & Niebuhr, 2014). For example, a gating study found that 18% of Canadian English adult listeners identified questions at above-chance levels after hearing only a single word and increased to 49% of listeners after hearing three words (of a five-word utterance; Saindon et al, 2017).…”

The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax

“…In North American English, interrogatives differ from declaratives in the realization of the nuclear contour with questions ending with L* H-H% contours (Bartels 1997(Bartels , 1999. Although the final contour is the main cue to mark sentence types in English, recent studies have suggested that a higher initial pitch accent distinguishes questions from statements (Saindon et al 2017;Patience et al 2018).…”