Overriding default interpretations through prosody: Depictive predicates in Brazilian Portuguese

Natália Brambatti Guzzo,Heather Goad

doi:10.3765/plsa.v2i0.4077

Abstract

In Brazilian Portuguese, depictive predicates can have ambiguous readings: the attribute can either refer to the subject (high attachment; HA) or the object (low attachment; LA) of the sentence. Previous studies have found that LA is the default interpretation for ambiguous depictive predicates (e.g., Magalhães & Maia 2006, Fonseca & Magalhães 2007), and that speakers use different acoustic cues to signal HA. However, these studies found several mismatches between speakers’ intended intonation and listeners’ interpretations. We conducted a judgement task and a production task to determine which acoustic cues are used by native speakers to arrive at HA interpretation. The results for the judgement task indicate that HA interpretation is favored by pause before attribute (which can be combined with another cue in the attribute). In the production task, speakers can also signal HA by putting a pause before the attribute (which can be combined with another cue in the object). However, some of the participants did not use any acoustic cue to signal HA, which suggests that some speakers arrive at a HA interpretation only through context, not prosody.

Highlights

One of the assumptions of Prosodic Phonology is that the way in which structurally ambiguous sentences are parsed into prosodic domains helps listeners disambiguate them (Nespor & Vogel 2007/1986)
Regarding HIGH F0 IN ATTRIBUTE, these results suggest that, even though the effect of this condition is not as strong as the effect of the conditions involving a pause before the attribute, it favors HA when compared to the three conditions that disfavor this interpretation
Previous studies on ambiguous depictive predicates in Brazilian Portuguese indicated that while low attachment is the default interpretation, high attachment can be arrived at through the use of acoustic cues. Such studies found a high degree of variability in the acoustic cues that were used to both signal and interpret HA, as well as mismatches between speakers’ pronunciations and listeners’ interpretations. These inconsistent results led to questions about whether methodological factors were at play, or whether speakers/listeners rely mostly on context with a smaller role left to acoustic cues

Summary

Introduction

One of the assumptions of Prosodic Phonology is that the way in which structurally ambiguous sentences are parsed into prosodic domains helps listeners disambiguate them (Nespor & Vogel 2007/1986). In an analysis of disambiguation of attributive adjectives in postnominal position in Italian, Nespor & Vogel (2007/1986) propose that the parsing of material into phonological phrases (PPh) is crucial for the signaling of one of the possible interpretations. Ho visto in svendita degli sgabelli [per pianoforti]PPh [antichi]PPh see-PST-1SG on sale some stools for pianos old ‘I saw on sale some antique piano stools.’. B. Ho visto in svendita degli sgabelli [per pianoforti antichi]PPh see-PST-1SG on sale some stools for pianos old ‘I saw on sale some stools for antique pianos.’. In Spanish, the default interpretation for ambiguous relative clauses following a N PP sequence is that where the relative clause refers to the noun preceding the prepositional phrase (Fernández 2003); in a sentence such as Alguien disparó contra la criada de la actriz que estaba en el balcón ‘Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony’, in which the relative clause (que estava en el balcón) can refer to either the servant (criada) or the actress (actriz), the default interpretation is the one where it refers to the servant

Methods

Results

Conclusion