The role of intonation and visual cues in the perception of sentence types: Evidence from European Portuguese varieties

Abstract

Cruz, M., et al 2017 The role of intonation and visual cues in the perception of sentence types: Evidence from European Portuguese varieties. In this paper, we explore the role of intonation and visual cues in the perception of statements and questions in two varieties of European Portuguese-the standard (SEP) and the insular variety of Azores, Ponta Delgada (PtD)-previously shown to convey sentence type contrasts by different uses of intonational means and/or facial gestures, namely eyebrow movements. Forty native speakers (20 from each variety) were exposed to SEP and PtD stimuli in a perception task with three conditions (audio only, video only, and audiovisual). The audiovisual condition includes congruent and incongruent (both original and manipulated) stimuli, where there is either a match or a mismatch between the auditory and visual features as potential cues for a specific sentence type. We concluded that both SEP and PtD participants rely more on intonation than on eyebrow movement to identify sentence types, even when exposed to incongruent audiovisual stimuli. In the absence of audio information, unexpectedly, participants do not interpret eyebrow raising as a question marker, not even when perceiving stimuli from their native variety. When exposed to non-native audiovisual stimuli, both SEP and PtD participants present longer reaction times (RTs), especially for incongruent stimuli. Finally, although we confirm the strength of intonation over visual cues, RTs in the audiovisual condition are significantly shorter than in the audio condition, thus pointing to the relevance of visual cues for structural/linguistic marking.

The Role of the Auditory and Visual Modalities in the Perceptual Identification of Brazilian Portuguese Statements and Echo Questions

“…In this way, visual cues may signal the information status of sentence elements, for example, to distinguish broad from contrastive focus (e.g., see Lambrecht, 1994, for a discussion). Visual cues are also used for the identification of statements versus questions (Borràs-Comes & Prieto, 2011; Cruz, Swerts, & Frota, 2017; House, 2002; Nicholson et al, 2003; Srinivasan & Massaro, 2003). In other words, given the multimodal nature of speech production, listeners perceive linguistic functions through the combination of acoustic and visual cues, both at segmental and suprasegmental levels of speech (Gili Fivela, 2018).…”

A Percepção das interrogativas globais entre variedades do Português do Brasil

“…As noted in Frota et al (2014), the acquisition of the ability to recognize the question/statement sentence types is an important skill that is required in interaction contexts and in communication. Studies on the perception of sentence types in adult speech have shown that yes-no questions are perceived as such in different languages (Gussenhoven and Chen, 2000;Face, 2011;D'Imperio and House, 1997), including Portuguese (Falé and Faria, 2005;Cruz and Frota, 2011;Cruz et al, 2017).…”

“…Results from perception tests revealed that native speakers from SEP are not able to recognize the difference between e-ISSN 2176-9419 statements and yes-no questions from ALE and PtD. Interestingly, native speakers from these varieties are able to distinguish between the sentence types (Cruz and Frota, 2011;Cruz et al, 2017). The findings on the native perception of ALE and PtD suggest that other cues might be relevant, besides the phonological units that compose the nuclear contours, possibly including cues from the pre-nuclear stretch.…”

“…Previous studies on the role of intonation in the perception of yes-no questions have contributed to our knowledge of the prosodic system of many languages, including Portuguese and Spanish (e.g., Falé and Faria, 2005;Face, 2011;Gussenhoven and Chen, 2000) and of how the perception of intonation develops in early infancy (Frota et al, 2014), as well as to our understanding of relation between intonation and gestures (Cruz et al, 2017). However, there is little research on the perception of intonational variation across varieties of the same language (e.g., Fintoft, 1970;Gussenhoven and Udofot, 2010).…”

“…However, there is little research on the perception of intonational variation across varieties of the same language (e.g., Fintoft, 1970;Gussenhoven and Udofot, 2010). Unlike for production, perception studies of intonational variation have only very recently started to emerge (Frota and Vigário, 2000;Cruz and Frota, 2011;Cruz et al, 2017;Nunes and Seara, 2015). This paper examines the perception of information-seeking yes-no questions in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), as spoken in Paraíba, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul.…”