Speakers can use distinct intonation contours in polar questions to convey information about ‘degree of commitment.’ The present study analyzes the intonational variation in Mieres Asturian polar questions and explores whether speakers encode information about their belief states intonationally. A production experiment was designed to elicit polar questions, and the results uncovered three main intonational patterns, namely H+L* L%, H* L%, and L* L%. The data show that, while H+L* L% is used as a canonical or ‘default’ PQ-marking tune and does not encode any information about speaker belief states, H* L% and L* L% are epistemically specified, expressing a positive epistemic bias towards the proposition, and a state of disbelief on the part of the speaker, respectively.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.