Voice quality and speaking rate in Icelandic rhetorical questions

Daniela Wochner,Nicole Dehé

doi:10.1017/s0332586522000014

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we show that Icelandic uses the phonetic parameters of speaking rate, duration and voice quality (VQ) to distinguish between information-seeking questions (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs). Specifically, durations are longer (speaking rate is slower) and nonmodal VQs are used more in RQs than in ISQs. Our findings for temporal parameters fit in with previous studies on the prosody of RQs in various languages. With respect to VQ, Icelandic differs, for example, from German and English in the location of breathy voice in the utterance (utterance-initial in German and English, utterance-final in Icelandic). We interpret the utterance-final position of breathiness in Icelandic RQs as a potential compensating strategy for the lack of phonological cues, i.e. boundary tones.

Highlights

This paper deals with phonetic differences between information-seeking questions (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Icelandic, voice quality (VQ) and speaking rate/global duration, focusing on polar and wh-questions
The analysis reveals that RQs in Icelandic differ from ISQs in terms of VQ and speaking rate/duration
This is in line with results for other languages, suggesting that temporal cues are used cross-linguistically to distinguish between RQs and ISQs in prosody

Summary

Introduction

This paper deals with phonetic differences between information-seeking questions (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Icelandic, voice quality (VQ) and speaking rate/global duration, focusing on polar and wh-questions. The prosody of the two illocution types (ISQs, RQs) has recently been compared for several languages, among them English (Dehé & Braun 2020b), German (Braun et al 2019), Standard Chinese (Zahner et al 2021), French (Beyssade & Delais-Roussarie, to appear), Estonian (Asu, Sahkai & Lippus 2020), Italian (Sorianello 2018, 2019), Cantonese (Lo, Kiss & Tulling 2019), Japanese (Miura & Hara 1995) and Icelandic (Dehé, Braun & Wochner 2018, Dehé & Braun 2020a); see Dehé et al (2022) for an overview These studies show that speakers make use of the same prosodic parameters to indicate rhetorical meaning across languages: F0, constituent duration/speaking rate, and VQ.

Methods

Results

Conclusion