Surprise questions in spoken French

Celle, Agnès; Pélissier, Maud

doi:10.1515/lingvan-2020-0109

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…For a prosodic analysis of French wh-questions that are ambiguous between an information-seeking and a non-canonical meaning of surprise (or expectation denial), see alsoBrunetti et al (2021), as well asCelle and Pélissier (2021).…”

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confidence: 99%

Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests

Ruytenbeek

Trott²

2022

J. Fr. Lang. Stud.

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Some utterances are pragmatically ambiguous. For instance, Tu peux fermer la fenêtre ? (“Can you close the window?”) can be a request for information or an “indirect request” (IR) to close the window. A possible way for speakers to make it clear whether they intend these expressions as a direct or indirect speech act is to use cues such as gestures or prosody. It has been shown for English that participants’ identifications of IRs are predicted by f0 slope, mean f0, and f0 duration. However, the extent to which these findings extend to other languages remains unknown. In this article, we explore the prosodic features associated with French IRs, a language poorly documented from that perspective. We address two research questions: Are listeners’ pragmatic interpretations of French IR constructions predicted by speaker’s original intent? Do prosodic cues play the same role in French modal interrogatives as in declarative remarks? We find, first, that remarks with more positive f0 slope are more likely to be interpreted as requests, but modal interrogatives with more positive f0 slope are more likely to be taken as questions. Second, while longer remarks were more likely to be interpreted as requests, longer modal interrogatives were more likely to be interpreted as questions.

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confidence: 99%

Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests

Ruytenbeek

Trott²

2022

J. Fr. Lang. Stud.

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“…The study compared the prosody of string-identical SQs and ISQs that were elicited by means of context descriptions. The design of the experiment as well as the types of interrogatives were inspired by Celle & Pélissier (2021). All data, analysis code, and research materials of the study are available at the Open Science Framework repository: https://osf.io/knygh/.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To our knowledge, the only study that directly addresses the prosody of syntactically unmarked interrogative sentences expressing surprise is Celle & Pélissier's (2021) study on French that revealed significant prosodic differences between syntactically similar ISQs and SQs: SQs exhibited lengthening, slower speech rate, and less frequent final rising contours (but no difference in mean pitch or pitch range). The lengthening observed in French SQs could also be associated with signalling emotional expressivity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prosody of surprise questions in Estonian

2023

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This paper examines the role of prosody in a little-studied type of non-canonical questions: syntactically and lexically canonical interrogative sentences that have been uttered by the speaker in order to express surprise. The study compares Estonian surprise questions with string-identical information-seeking questions elicited by means of context descriptions. The materials comprise 1,008 utterances by 21 speakers. It is concluded that the prosody of the examined utterances has three roles that are relevant to the expression of surprise by ordinary interrogative sentences. First, the enhanced prosodic realisation of the utterances as manifested in a longer duration, a wider pitch range, and a more frequent occurrence of upstepped pitch accents conveys emotional expressivity. Second, lower pitch along with the creaky voice quality signals that the utterances are not canonical questions, while the main prosodic correlate of information-seeking questions is high pitch. Phonological pitch accents and boundary tones, however, are not used to distinguish between surprise questions and information-seeking questions. Third, the nuclear accent placement signals an information structure that is associated with the expression of incongruity or counterexpectation: the focal accent can evoke an alternative (set) that arises from the speaker’s expectations.

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“…Pour le français, le terme « question de surprise » a été d'abord utilisé surtout pour les questions en qu'est-ce que et en quoi dans les articles d'Agnès Celle avec ses co-auteurs (Celle et al 2021, Celle et Pélissier 2022, dont voici un exemple (1) avec un qu'est-ce que non-argumental :…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

L’expression de la surprise et les modalités de l’improbable dans les questions en kuidas (‘comment’) estonien et comment français

Amon,

Käsper,

Treikelder

2024

Nouvelles Tendances De La Romanistique Scandinave / Nuevas Tendencias De La Romanística Escandinava / Nuove Tendenze Della Roma

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Cet article examine l'emploi des interrogatives introduites par kuidas ('comment') estonien et comment français dans un contexte de surprise. La recherche s'appuie sur des exemples tirés d'un corpus bilingue fourni par l'Association franco-estonienne de lexicographie. Faisant valoir les relations entre la catégorie modale de possibilité (Van der Auwera & Plungian 1998) et la catégorie de mirativité, cette étude s'intéresse aux conditions suscitant des questions de surprise. Elle établit une typologie des questions en comment/kuidas, mettant en valeur la variété de leurs manifestations dans différents contextes modaux. Alors que les interrogatives constituent un moyen privilégié d'exprimer la surprise, l'étude souligne l'intensité variable de la surprise dans les questions et invite à une exploration plus approfondie des éléments linguistiques et contextuels qui déterminent son degré. Cette recherche contribue à notre compréhension des expressions linguistiques de la surprise, mettant en lumière l'interaction nuancée entre modalité et surprise dans une optique comparative.

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Surprise questions in spoken French

Cited by 9 publications

References 25 publications

Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests

Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests

The prosody of surprise questions in Estonian

L’expression de la surprise et les modalités de l’improbable dans les questions en kuidas (‘comment’) estonien et comment français

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