Informational and dialogue-coordinating functions of prosodic features of Japanese echoic responses

Abstract

Echoic responses, which reuse portions of the texts uttered in the preceding turns, abound in dialogues, although semantically they contribute little new information. In this paper, we attempt to identify the informational and dialogue-coordinating functions of Japanese echoic responses while focusing on their prosodic and temporal features. Toward this goal, we conducted an observational study based on a corpus of spoken dialogues, as well as three complementary experiments, where particular prosodic/temporal features of echoic responses were studied in a controlled and focused manner. In combination, the two lines of analyses provide evidence that (1) echoic responses with different timings, intonations, pitches, and speeds signal different degrees in which the speakers have integrated the repeated information into their prior knowledge, and (2) owing to this informational function, the prosodic/temporal features of an echoic response also have the dialogue-coordinating function of directing the listener in how to handle the information just repeated.