When is a wh-in-situ question identified in standard Persian?

Abstract

Previous literature demonstrated the influential role of prediction in processing speech [Brazil, 1981. The place of intonation in a discourse model. In C. Malcolm & M. Montgomery (Eds.), Studies in discourse analysis (pp. 146-157). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Grosjean, 1983. How long is the sentence? Prediction and prosody in the on-line processing of language. Linguistics, 21, 501-529, 1996a. Using prosody to predict the end of sentences in English and French: Normal and brain damaged subjects. Language and Cognitive Processes, 11, 107-134; Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003. Using prosody to avoid ambiguity: Effects of speaker awareness and referential context. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 103-130], and of prosody in predicting the eventual syntactic structure of ambiguous sentences [e.g. Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003. Using prosody to avoid ambiguity: Effects of speaker awareness and referential context. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 103-130]. Wh-insitu questions contain temporary syntactic ambiguity. One of the languages characterised by wh-insitu questions is Persian. The current research adopted the gating paradigm [Grosjean, 1980. Spoken word recognition processes and the gating paradigm. Perception and Psychophysics , 28, 267-283] to investigate when distinctive prosodic cues of the pre-wh part enable correct identification of wh-insitu questions in Persian. A perception experiment was designed in which gated stimuli were played to Persian native speakers in a forced-choice sentence identification task. In line with our expectation, correct identification responses were given from the beginning of the sentence. The result is discussed in the context of proposals regarding the need to integrate prosody and prediction into models of language and speech processing [Beach, 1991. The interpretation of prosodic patterns at points of syntactic structure ambiguity: Evidence for cue trading relations.

Italian wh-questions and the low periphery

“…Consequently, prosody can be expected to play a role of primary importance in marking these sentences as questions (cf. Shiamizadeh et al 2018). Although a post-verbal wh-element in Italian does not need to appear in sentence-final position (as it happens in languages such as Spanish, cf.…”