The meaning of intonation in yes-no questions in American English: A corpus study

Hedberg, Nancy; Sosa, Juan Manuel; Görgülü, Emrah

doi:10.1515/cllt-2014-0020

Cited by 31 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Indeed, a nonsignificant Language*Task interaction suggests that the type of task did not have an additional impact on the differences between groups in their realization of PAs and NCs. However, both groups showed a significantly larger pitch change in the SI than in the C task, suggesting the possibility of imitation of the pitch patterns observed in the stimuli used, and highlighting the importance of using a combination of controlled and more spontaneous tasks [12,28,29]. These initial results suggest a possible influence of the L1, based on the lack of pitch movement in the initial PA and the number of non-target-like realizations in contexts that prompted a DQ.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…In English, the three sentence types illustrated in (1) differ in word order and in their intonational patterns: DQs and AQs have a final rise (either a low or high rise), whereas Ss are typically have a final falling contour [11,12]:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, AQs and DQs differ in terms of their syntax, and the context in which they are expected to occur. No differences in the realization of the first pitch accent (PA) have been reported [11], and, although nuclear contours (NCs) for both questions display a rise in North American English [11,16], there is some discussion regarding whether AQs and DQs differ in the type of rise [17] or regarding the frequency of low and high rising contours [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

L1 Influence and Task effects in the realization of sentence types by Inuktitut-English sequential bilinguals

Colantoni¹,

Johns²,

Klassen³

et al. 2018

Speech Prosody 2018

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This paper explores the role of cross-linguistic influence and task type in the realization of pitch accents and nuclear contours across English sentence types (statements, absolute questions and declarative questions) by sequential Inuktitut-English bilinguals. In Inuktitut, intonation is mainly a cue for phrasing; i.e., boundary tones are mapped to finality vs. continuity in turn-taking [1,2]. Questions are morphologically marked [3], and while a rising intonation may also be used, it is not always present. In contrast, English absolute questions are syntactically marked, whereas the difference between statements and declarative questions is purely prosodic. Participants performed two tasks: a delayed imitation task, and a contextualized production task. Results revealed that bilinguals differed from controls in the type and phonetic realization of the first pitch accent (but not the nuclear contour), displaying a reduced use of pitch. In the semispontaneous task, bilinguals differed from controls in the number of non-target-like realizations, particularly in contexts that prompted declarative questions. We argue that these findings demonstrate clear patterns of prosodic and morphosyntactic cross-linguistic influence, as well as the importance of incorporating contextual information as a variable [4].

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

L1 Influence and Task effects in the realization of sentence types by Inuktitut-English sequential bilinguals

Colantoni¹,

Johns²,

Klassen³

et al. 2018

Speech Prosody 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One distinguishing feature between these two tunes is that they end in different boundary tones, an L% in the case of the declarative fall and an H% in the case of interrogative rises. The interrogative rise is typically used in polar questions, it can also be used in wh-questions (Hedberg et al, 2014); the declarative fall is typically used in declarative assertions and wh-questions, but sometimes also in polar questions. The semantic differences between these tunes remains an open research question (see Truckenbrodt, 2012, for a review).…”

Section: Speech Act and Intonational Tunementioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of focus prominence on phrasing

Wagner

McAuliffe

2019

Journal of Phonetics

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Prosody simultaneously encodes different kinds of information about an utterance, including the type of speech act (which, in English, often affects the choice of intonational tune), the syntactic constituent structure (which mainly affects prosodic phrasing), and the location of semantic focus (which mainly affects the relative prosodic prominence between words). The syntactic and semantic functional dimensions (speech act, constituency, focus) are orthogonal to each other, but to which extent their prosodic correlates are remains controversial. This paper reports on a production experiment that crosses these three dimensions to look for interactions, concentrating on interactions between focus prominence and phrasing. The results provide evidence that interactions are more limited than many current theories of sentence prosody would predict, and support a theory that keeps different prosodic dimensions representationally separate.

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“…Normally, the interviewer reads out the relevant examples. However, due to the possibility of intonation affecting the interpretation of interrogatives (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990;Banuazizi & Creswell 1999;Wochner et al 2015;Hedberg, Sosa, & Görgülü 2017), the interviewer read out the preceding context before participants pressed the space bar on a laptop to hear the relevant example sentence, which was recorded in advance by a 21-year old male speaker of the dialect. This allowed intonation to be controlled for while still retaining as much of the conversational feel of the interview method as possible.…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viewing dialect change through acceptability judgments: A case study in Shetland dialect

Jamieson

2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Acceptability judgments are the standard methodology for investigating syntactic variation. While acceptability judgments have been shown to be reliable in cases of assumed stable variation, there has been little discussion of how syntactic change plays out in judgment tasks. This is despite evidence from sociolinguistics that at the end of a change, speakers' behaviour in production is "unpredictable". How does this "unpredictability" play out in judgment tasks, where speakers are asked to perform metalinguistic assessments on their use of a changing variable? In this paper, I present the results of acceptability judgment tasks focusing on a particle,-n, available in some biased questions in the Shetland dialect of Scots. This variety has been claimed to be rapidly obsolescing (e.g. Smith & Durham 2011). Combining quantitative analysis of acceptability judgments with qualitative comments made by the speakers, I argue young speakers exhibit perceptual hyperdialectalism in their judgments: extending acceptability of the variable to contexts where older speakers don't accept it; giving higher ratings than expected given their qualitative comments when the variable is being lost, and generally rating examples which could be perceived as "dialectal" higher. I argue these patterns arise from Preston's (2013) definition of linguistic insecurity: younger speakers are aware their grammar diverges from a more " traditional" grammar, but the traditional grammar is an important identity marker. These speakers therefore attempt to demonstrate knowledge of an older grammar-but their knowledge is not accurate. These patterns highlight the importance of combining quantitative and qualitative analysis in dialect syntax.

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The meaning of intonation in yes-no questions in American English: A corpus study

Cited by 31 publications

References 8 publications

L1 Influence and Task effects in the realization of sentence types by Inuktitut-English sequential bilinguals

L1 Influence and Task effects in the realization of sentence types by Inuktitut-English sequential bilinguals

The effect of focus prominence on phrasing

Viewing dialect change through acceptability judgments: A case study in Shetland dialect

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