Prosody meets pragmatics: a production study on German verb-first sentences

Wochner, Daniela; Dehé, Nicole

doi:10.21437/speechprosody.2018-85

Cited by 2 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…When speakers produced the same contour in the two illocution types (polar questions: L* H-^H%, wh -questions: L+H* L-%), there were still subtle phonetic differences: In polar questions, RQs with an H-^H% edge tone had a smaller F0-excursion than polar ISQs with an H-^H% edge tone. Similar effects of illocution type on the excursion of the final rise were reported by Michalsky (2017) for the comparison between the first part in conditional sentences and polar questions, and by Wochner and Dehé (2018) for the comparison of verb-first RQs, exclamatives and ISQs (RQ < exclamatives < ISQ). For the wh -questions in our study, the rising–falling movement had a higher peak in ISQs than in RQs, which is in line with the findings of Rohloff and Michalsky (2018) on higher peaks in wh -questions than in declarative statements.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German

et al. 2018

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This paper reports on the prosody of rhetorical questions (RQs) and information-seeking questions (ISQs) in German for two question types—polar questions and constituent questions (henceforth “ wh-questions”). The results are as follows: Phonologically, polar RQs were mainly realized with H-% (high plateau), while polar ISQs mostly ended in H-^H% (high-rise). Wh-RQs almost exclusively terminated in a low edge tone, whereas wh-ISQs allowed for more tonal variation (L-%, L-H%, H-^H%). Irrespective of question type, RQs were mainly produced with L*+H accents. Phonetically, RQs were more often realized with breathy voice quality than ISQs, in particular in the beginning of the interrogative. Furthermore, they were produced with longer constituent durations than ISQs, in particular at the end of the interrogative. While the difference between RQs and ISQs is reflected in the intonational terminus of the utterance, this does not happen in the way suggested in the semantic literature, and in addition, accent type and phonetic parameters also play a role. Crucially, a simple distinction between rising and falling intonation is insufficient to capture the realization of the different illocution types (RQs, ISQs), against frequent claims in the semantic and pragmatic literature. We suggest alternative ways to interpret the findings.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German

et al. 2018

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“…These accents have been related to differences in meaning: new information vs. self-evident information/information conflicting a speaker's belief (Kohler, 1991b;Grice and Baumann, 2002;Niebuhr, 2007b;Kügler and Gollrad, 2015) or attitudinal information, such as sarcasm (Lommel and Michalsky, 2017). Recent production data on German rhetorical questions and verbfirst exclamatives (Wochner, 2021) reveal another accent type which falls between the two more established ones (Figure 1B). In this contour, both the low and the high tonal target are realized within the stressed syllable (Figure 1B), similar to the late-medial peak reported in Kohler (2005, p. 90).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Crucially, it did not only occur in contexts of tonal crowding, but also when post-tonic syllables were available. (LH) * has also been observed with verb-first exclamatives, while string-identical information-seeking questions were realized with a high-rising contour (Wochner, 2021). The occurrence of (LH) * in these (non-canonical) utterance types, as opposed to informationseeking questions, suggests that it may be phonemic, rather than a phonetic variant of another accent.…”

Section: Background Rising-falling Contours In Germanmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…This method allows us to test whether and how intonation condition and regional background affect participants' responses. We predict that if there are in fact three distinct contours, they will lead to different interpretations: Drawing on the available literature, we expect that L+H * leads to descriptions relating to an information-seeking nature (Kohler, 1991b;Baumann and Grice, 2006;, while L * +H is expected to trigger descriptions related to contrast and/or attitudinal meanings (Grice et al, 2005;Niebuhr, 2007b;Lommel and Michalsky, 2017); (LH) * is hypothesized to be interpreted as rhetorical , or to signal surprise or obviousness (Wochner, 2021), or unexpectedness (Kohler, 2005). In terms of regional variation, we cannot make strong predictions regarding meaning-recall that Kohler (1991b, p.…”

Section: The Present Study: Rationale and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Studies that have addressed the functional distinction between intonational contours have employed semantic scales (e.g., Dombrowski, 2003;Kohler, 2005;Dombrowski and Niebuhr, 2010;Kügler and Gollrad, 2015;Wochner, 2021), free association tasks (Kohler, 1991b), acceptability judgment tasks (Baumann and Grice, 2006), or psycholinguistic methods such as eye-tracking (e.g., Braun and Biezma, 2019). Kügler and Gollrad (2015), for instance, showed that German listeners differentiated between a contrastive and a broad focus reading based on differences in the scaling of the H tone (the L tone did not affect perceptual ratings, but see Ritter and Grice, 2015).…”

Section: Modeling Intonational Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Three Kinds of Rising-Falling Contours in German wh-Questions: Evidence From Form and Function

et al. 2022

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The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well as inter- and intra-speaker variability in f0. Category boundaries thus remain “fuzzy” and it is non-trivial how the (continuous) acoustic space maps onto (discrete) pitch accent categories. We focus on three types of rising-falling contours, which differ in the alignment of L(ow) and H(igh) tones with respect to the stressed syllable. Most of the intonational systems on German have described two rising accent categories, e.g., L+H* and L*+H in the German ToBI system. L+H* has a high-pitched stressed syllable and a low leading tone aligned in the pre-tonic syllable; L*+H a low-pitched stressed syllable and a high trailing tone in the post-tonic syllable. There are indications for the existence of a third category which lies between these two categories, with both L and H aligned within the stressed syllable, henceforth termed (LH)*. In the present paper, we empirically investigate the distinctiveness of three rising-falling contours [L+H*, (LH)*, and L*+H, all with a subsequent low boundary tone] in German wh-questions. We employ an approach that addresses both the form and the function of the contours, also taking regional variation into account. In Experiment 1 (form), we used a delayed imitation paradigm to test whether Northern and Southern German speakers can imitate the three rising-falling contours in wh-questions as distinct contours. In Experiment 2 (function), we used a free association task to investigate whether listeners interpret the pragmatic meaning of the three contours differently. Imitation results showed that German speakers—both from the North and the South—reproduced the three contours. There was a small but significant effect of regional variety such that contours produced by speakers from the North were slightly more distinct than those by speakers from the South. In the association task, listeners from both varieties attributed distinct meanings to the (LH)* accent as opposed to the two ToBI accents L+H* and L*+H. Combined evidence from form and function suggests that three distinct contours can be found in the acoustic and perceptual space of German rising-falling contours.

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Prosody meets pragmatics: a production study on German verb-first sentences

Cited by 2 publications

References 14 publications

The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German

The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German

Three Kinds of Rising-Falling Contours in German wh-Questions: Evidence From Form and Function

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