Abstract
Previous processing studies have shown that constituents that are prosodically marked as focus lead to an activation of alternatives. We investigate the processing of constituents that are prosodically marked as contrastive topics. In German, contrastive topics are prosodically realized by prenuclear L∗+H accents. Our study tests (a) whether prenuclear accents (as opposed to nuclear accents) are able to activate contrastive alternatives, (b) whether they do this in the same way as constituents prosodically marked as focus with nuclear accents do, which is important for semantic modeling, and (c) whether the activation of alternatives is caused by pitch accent type (prenuclear L∗+H as contrastive accent vs. prenuclear L+H∗ as non-contrastive accent) or by differences in F0-excursion (related to prominence). We conducted two visual-world eye-tracking studies, in which German listeners heard declarative utterances (e.g., The swimmer wanted to put on flappers) and watched displays that depicted four printed words: one that was a contrastive alternative to the subject noun (e.g., diver), one that was non-contrastively related to it (e.g., sports), the object (e.g., flappers), which had to be clicked, and an unrelated distractor. Experiment 1 presented participants with two naturally produced intonation conditions, a broad focus control condition with a prenuclear L+H∗ accent on the subject and a contrastive topic condition with a prenuclear L∗+H accent. The results showed that participants fixated more on the contrastive alternative when the subject was produced with an L∗+H accent, with the same effect size and timing as reported for focus constituents. Experiment 2 resynthesized the stimuli so that peak height and F0-excursion were the same across intonation conditions. The effect was the same, but the time course was slightly later. Our results suggest that prenuclear L∗+H immediately leads to the activation of alternatives during online processing, and that the F0-excursion of the accent lends little. The results are discussed with regard to the processing of contrastive focus accents and theories of contrastive topic.
Highlights
In intonation languages, utterances may be produced with a series of pitch accents, i.e., tonal targets or movements that are associated with the stressed syllables of accented words, see Example (1) – stressed syllables are underlined.(1) [We will have to discuss the paper.]IPPitch Accents and AlternativesThe utterance in (1) is produced as one intonation phrase (IP), i.e., without further phrasing
The eye-tracking data showed that participants fixated more on contrastive associates to the subject constituent when it was produced with a prenuclear L∗+H accent compared to a prenuclear L+H∗ accent
Given the lack of a difference for fixations to the non-contrastive associate, the data speak in favor of a model in which prenuclear L∗+H is a contrastive accent in the sense that it leads to an increased activation of contrastive alternatives
Summary
Utterances may be produced with a series of pitch accents, i.e., tonal targets or movements that are associated with the stressed syllables of accented words, see Example (1) – stressed syllables are underlined. It is often argued that the F0 contour between the rising accent on the contrastive topic and the fall on the focus remains high, resulting in the so-called hat pattern (originally described for Dutch by Cohen and ’t Hart, 1967)9 This realization is exemplified in Example (10), using the prosodic notation of the GToBI, German Tone and Break Indices, system (Baumann et al, 2001; Grice et al, 2005). Given that prenuclear L∗+H leads to a CT-reading, according to semantic/pragmatic proposals we predict that this accent has the same potential to activate contrastive alternatives than the nuclear L+H∗ focus accent of Experiment 1a in Braun et al (2018a). Note that the experimental results with respect to H1 and H2 will allow us to discuss the different semantic/pragmatic formal theories in view of the psychological reality of contrastive topics
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