The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German

Abstract

This paper reports on the prosody of rhetorical questions (RQs) and information-seeking questions (ISQs) in German for two question types—polar questions and constituent questions (henceforth “ wh-questions”). The results are as follows: Phonologically, polar RQs were mainly realized with H-% (high plateau), while polar ISQs mostly ended in H-^H% (high-rise). Wh-RQs almost exclusively terminated in a low edge tone, whereas wh-ISQs allowed for more tonal variation (L-%, L-H%, H-^H%). Irrespective of question type, RQs were mainly produced with L*+H accents. Phonetically, RQs were more often realized with breathy voice quality than ISQs, in particular in the beginning of the interrogative. Furthermore, they were produced with longer constituent durations than ISQs, in particular at the end of the interrogative. While the difference between RQs and ISQs is reflected in the intonational terminus of the utterance, this does not happen in the way suggested in the semantic literature, and in addition, accent type and phonetic parameters also play a role. Crucially, a simple distinction between rising and falling intonation is insufficient to capture the realization of the different illocution types (RQs, ISQs), against frequent claims in the semantic and pragmatic literature. We suggest alternative ways to interpret the findings.

Cadê o amor da mamãe? As interrogativas na Fala Dirigida à Criança adquirindo o PB

“…Ainda, é importante destacar que, em termos discursivos, as interrogativas podem ser divididas entre perguntas plenas e retóricas de acordo com a intenção comunicativa do falante. A pergunta plena se caracteriza por buscar informação a ser dada pelo interlocutor na forma de resposta verbal (Silva e Santos, 2015;Braun et al, 2018). Quanto à retórica, é formulada para não ser respondida (Silva e Santos, 2015) e, para Braun et al (2018), tem por objetivo buscar o engajamento do interlocutor à questão, e não uma resposta.…”

“…A pergunta plena se caracteriza por buscar informação a ser dada pelo interlocutor na forma de resposta verbal (Silva e Santos, 2015;Braun et al, 2018). Quanto à retórica, é formulada para não ser respondida (Silva e Santos, 2015) e, para Braun et al (2018), tem por objetivo buscar o engajamento do interlocutor à questão, e não uma resposta. Dehé e Braun (2019) defendem que a pergunta retórica tem três características: não espera resposta; tem a "sensação de uma afirmação" ("the feel of an assertion", Dehé e Braun, 2019, p. 2); e pode ser opcionalmente respondida.…”

“…Em outras palavras, a busca de informação e a presença de resposta, que caracterizam a pergunta plena, seriam mantidas, porém de forma atenuada. Estudos recentes vêm buscando caracterizar prosodicamente perguntas plenas e retóricas na FDA em diversas línguas e verificar possíveis distinções entre esses dois tipos de perguntas (Braun et al, 2018; Dehé e Braun, 2019, para o alemão e o inglês, respectivamente).…”

The Processing of Prosodic Cues to Rhetorical Question Interpretation: Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistics Evidence

“…Corpus analyses have shown that rhetorical questions differ from information-seeking questions in their prosodic realization [4,5], regarding boundary tones and pitch accents. Previous experimental work in German has shown that questions in a rhetorical context differ from questions in an information-seeking context in terms of their prosodic realization [6]. RQs are more often realized with nuclear L*+H accents than ISQs, have longer constituent durations and more often a breathy voice quality, irrespective of question type (whquestion or polar question).…”

The prosody of rhetorical questions in English

“…Longer constituent durations in RQs than in ISQs have indeed been reported for German (Braun et al . 2018) and for Icelandic (Dehé et al 2018).…”