Prosodic Boundaries in Adjunct Attachment

Abstract

Five studies explored the processing of ambiguous sentences like Martin maintained that the CEO lied when the investigation started/at the start of the investigation. The central question was why particular prosodic boundaries have the effects they do. A written questionnaire provided baseline preferences and suggested that clausal adjuncts (when the investigation started) receive more high attachments than nonclausal adjuncts (at the start of the investigation). Four auditory studies manipulated the prosodic boundary before the adjunct clause and the prosodic boundary between the matrix clause and its complement. They disconfirm every version of an account where only the local boundary before the adjunct is important, whether the account is based on the acoustic magnitude of the boundary or its phonological type (an intermediate boundary characterized by the presence of a phrase accent vs. an intonational phrase boundary characterized by both a phrase accent and a boundary tone). Instead the results support use of the global prosodic context, especially the relative size of the local boundary and the distant boundary.

The role of prosodic boundaries in the resolution of lexical embedding in speech comprehension

“…It has been suggested that prosodic representations are computed as an utterance is processed, and that such representations contribute to processes such as the assignment of syntactic structure (e.g. Carlson, Clifton, & Frazier, 2001;Kjelgaard & Speer, 1999). If a prosodic structure has to be computed to contribute to establishing the syntactic structure of an utterance, it can also be used to modulate lexical activation.…”

Prosodic influences on consonant production in Dutch: Effects of prosodic boundaries, phrasal accent and lexical stress

“…Listeners may marshall all of this evidence for prosodic structure as they process continuous speech. It has been argued, e.g., that prosody is used by listeners to help retrieve the syntactic structure of utterances (e.g., Schafer, 1997;Kjelgaard & Speer, 1999;Carlson, Clifton, & Frazier, 2001;Jun, 2003) and to help in word recognition (e.g., Kim, 2003Kim, , 2004a. Information specifying the location of prosodic boundaries may also be used by listeners to help resolve lexical ambiguities in the segmentation of continuous speech (Salverda, Dahan, & McQueen, 2003).…”

Is it all relative? Effects of prosodic boundaries on the comprehension and production of attachment ambiguities

“…Manipulations of prosodic structure influence how listeners interpret syntactically ambiguous utterances (Lehiste 1973;Lehiste, Olive & Streeter 1976;Beach, 1991;Cooper & Paccia-Cooper 1980;Price, Ostendorf, Shattuck-Hufnagel, & Fong, 1991;Schafer, 1997;Carlson, Clifton & Frazier, 2001; see Cutler, Dahan & van Donselaar, 1997 for a review). These effects of prosody emerge quickly during online sentence comprehension, suggesting that this is a robust property of the human parser (Marslen-Wilson, Tyler, Warren, Grenier, & Lee, 1992;Nagel, Shapiro, Tuller, & Nawy, 1996;Pynte & Prieur, 1996;Kjelgaard & Speer, 1999;Steinhauer, Alter & Frederici, 1999;Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003;Warren, Grabe & Nolan, 1995;Weber, Grice & Crocker, 2006).…”

“…Other theories focus on a more limited range of phenomena and characterize the mapping within this domain. One commonly explored phenomenon is the prosodic phrasing of syntactic attachment ambiguities (Schafer, 1997;Carlson et al, 2001;Clifton, Carlson & Frazier, 2002). There are several reasons why this might be a particularly productive place to begin pinning down the syntax-prosody interface.…”