Meaning, Intonation And Negation

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes a methodology for the study of meaning and intonation, focusing both on what speakers can do (using production experiments) and on what hearers can do (using perception experiments). We show that such an experimental paradigm may yield interesting results from a semantical point of view by discussing the role intonation can play in the interpretation of negation phrases in natural language. We present empirical evidence for the existence of a set of prosodic differences between two kinds of negation, descriptive and metalinguistic. This distinction has been the subject of considerable debate in presupposition theory and also plays an important role in discussions about the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics. In general, we argue that intonation gives rise to 'soft constraints', and point out that an optimality theoretic framework may be suitable to model the relation between intonation and meaning. We outline some problems and prospects for an optimality theoretic account of meaning and intonation.