Question Intonation Research Articles

Question intonation contours as dynamic epistemic operators

Although intonation has been traditionally claimed to be a strong indicator of the epistemic commitments of the participants in a discourse, very few empirical investigations have addressed specific semantic hypotheses related to the precise epistemic contribution of question intonation to utterance interpretation. The main aim of this paper is to test the claim that intonation in Catalan plays an important role in the specification of dynamic epistemic commitments in two complementary directions, i.e., speaker commitments to the speaker’s own proposition and speaker agreement with the addressee’s proposition. Following Krifka’s commitment space semantics (Krifka 2015, 2017), we will test the claim that question intonation in Catalan encodes different levels of assert (commitment) and reject ((dis)agreement) epistemic operators. A total of 119 Central Catalan listeners participated in an acceptability judgment task and were asked to rate the perceived degree of acceptability between a set of interrogative utterances (variously produced with one of four intonational contours) and their previous discourse context (which was controlled for epistemic bias). Results showed that question intonation contours encode binary (and not degree) distinctions in speaker commitment and speaker agreement. That is, results showed that question intonation encodes fine-grained information about the epistemic stance of the speaker, not only in relation to the speaker’s own propositions but also in relation to the addressee’s propositions. From a crosslinguistic point of view, we argue that intonation closely parallels the function of modal markers in their encoding of speaker commitment and speaker agreement operators.

The effect of pitch interplay on English-speaking learners of Mandarin

AbstractThis study examines how native English speakers perceive and produce intonation and tone in Mandarin statements and unmarked questions. The results showed, as predicted, that English speakers had less difficulty perceiving intonation and sentence-final tone when the pitch movement of both was in the same direction than when it was not. On the production side, English speakers performed much better at producing tone than intonation. The intelligibility of their question intonation was especially compromised, likely due to their narrow pitch range. The English speakers also consistently produced more final rising pitch in Mandarin unmarked questions, suggesting phonological influence from their native language. Findings highlight the role of language experience in language learning, and the importance of pedagogical awareness.

A model of Mandarin Chinese question intonation

Echo questions in Mandarin Chinese provide an interesting case study of the interaction between lexical tone and intonation because it appears that echo questions are distinguished from declaratives by modifying the F0 trajectory of the sentence-final lexical tone in ways that depend on the identity of that tone. The most general effect is that the offset of the final tone is higher in a question than in a declarative rendition of the same sentence. If the final tone is high or falling, F0 is raised throughout the tone, but if the final tone if low or rising, the F0 minimum is not raised in questions. We propose a quantitative analysis according to which question intonation consists of a high boundary tone realized simultaneously with the offset of the final lexical tone. Compromise between the boundary tone and targets for the lexical tone results in raising of the offset of the tone. Additional effects result from interactions with other targets pertaining to the shape of the lexical tone. For example, simply raising the offset of a falling tone would result in failure to realize a sufficiently steep fall, so the onset of the fall is raised as well.

Question intonation in Brunei English

ABSTRACTThis article explores the prosodic marking of questions in Brunei English. Ten ethnically Malay female speakers of Brunei English were recorded doing a Map Task in pairs. From these dialogues, 94 questions were identified and classified according to their syntactic and functional type. Their nuclear pitch movement and overall intonation contour was determined auditorily and pitch alignment for rising nuclei was measured acoustically. The results show that the Brunei speakers of English use systematic prosodic marking of different syntactic and functional types of question that differs from British English usage. No evidence for an influence of their L1 Malay prosodic patterns was found. Differences from question intonation produced by Malaysian and Singaporean speakers of English are explained by the Brunei speakers’ different norm orientation.

Online processing of tone and intonation in Mandarin: Evidence from ERPs

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the online processing of tone and intonation in Mandarin at the attentive stage. We examined the behavioral and electrophysiological responses of native Mandarin listeners to Mandarin sentences, which contrast in final tones (rising Tone2 or falling Tone4) and intonations (Question or Statement). A clear P300 effect was observed for question-statement contrast in sentences ending with Tone4, but no ERP effect was found for question-statement contrast in sentences ending with Tone2. Our results provide ERP evidence for the interaction of tone and intonation in Mandarin, confirming the findings with behavioral metalinguistic data that native Mandarin listeners can distinguish between question intonation and statement intonation when the intonation is associated with a final Tone4, but fail to do so when the intonation is associated with a final Tone2. Our study extended the understanding of online processing of tone and intonation (1) from the pre-attentive stage to the attentive stage and (2) within a larger domain (i.e. multi-word utterances) than a single word utterance.

Intonation processing deficits of emotional words among Mandarin Chinese speakers with congenital amusia: an ERP study.

Background: Congenital amusia is a disorder that is known to affect the processing of musical pitch. Although individuals with amusia rarely show language deficits in daily life, a number of findings point to possible impairments in speech prosody that amusic individuals may compensate for by drawing on linguistic information. Using EEG, we investigated (1) whether the processing of speech prosody is impaired in amusia and (2) whether emotional linguistic information can compensate for this impairment.Method: Twenty Chinese amusics and 22 matched controls were presented pairs of emotional words spoken with either statement or question intonation while their EEG was recorded. Their task was to judge whether the intonations were the same.Results: Amusics exhibited impaired performance on the intonation-matching task for emotional linguistic information, as their performance was significantly worse than that of controls. EEG results showed a reduced N2 response to incongruent intonation pairs in amusics compared with controls, which likely reflects impaired conflict processing in amusia. However, our EEG results also indicated that amusics were intact in early sensory auditory processing, as revealed by a comparable N1 modulation in both groups.Conclusion: We propose that the impairment in discriminating speech intonation observed among amusic individuals may arise from an inability to access information extracted at early processing stages. This, in turn, could reflect a disconnection between low-level and high-level processing.

Historical pragmatics and early speech recordings: Diachronic developments in turn-taking and narrative structure in radio talk shows

In this study we analyse diachronic developments in some of the details of the turn-taking system (turn length, question intonation, hesitation markers) and the role they play in the narrative structures of conversations. Our investigation is based on audio recordings of a popular BBC Radio 4 talk show programme “Desert Island Discs”. These recordings have recently become available as a collection of podcasts reaching back to the 1950s. The early recordings are styled as interviews in a question – answer format. In more recent years, however, the presenter and the celebrity are more likely to cooperate in their different roles to jointly produce a narrative. The presenter brings in a larger amount of background knowledge on the details of the celebrity's life, which the audience may or may not share, and encourages the celebrity to pick up the narrative and continue the story. This overall change from an interview format to the format of a shared narrative is reflected in the minute details of the turn-taking system with differences in turn length and the use of question intonation and hesitation markers.

Ixpantepec Nieves mixtec question intonation

Ixpantepec Nieves Mixtec (INM) is posited to have a three-way lexical tone system and lexical stress. However, no known work has investigated whether INM makes use of F0 intonationally. Our study addresses this gap and seeks to contribute to the typology of tone-intonation interactions. We recorded both polar and wh-questions. For polar questions, we analyzed the F0 from one female speaker. The speaker produced question-answer (Q&A) pairs, where the object of transitive verb phrases appeared in both the interrogative and declarative sentences, and differed in its lexical tone. The F0 of every vowel was measured to determine if lexical tones vary depending on whether they occur in an interrogative or declarative sentence of the Q&A pair. Pitch raising is the only significant difference (p < 0.01) between the Q&A pair; both high and low lexical tones have higher F0 in the interrogative compared to the declarative. For wh-questions, a qualitative analysis was done using interview data from a male and female speakers. A quantitative analysis is also underway. The Q&A pairs had similar pitch contours and absolute F0 values; thus, no wh-question intonation or tone-intonation interaction was found. Implications for intonational typology in languages with lexical tones will be discussed.

The interaction of lexical tone, intonation and semantic context in on-line spoken word recognition: An ERP study on Cantonese Chinese

In two ERP experiments, we investigate the on-line interplay of lexical tone, intonation and semantic context during spoken word recognition in Cantonese Chinese. Experiment 1 shows that lexical tone and intonation interact immediately. Words with a low lexical tone at the end of questions (with a rising question intonation) lead to a processing conflict. This is reflected in a low accuracy in lexical identification and in a P600 effect compared to the same words at the end of a statement. Experiment 2 shows that a strongly biasing semantic context leads to much better lexical-identification performance for words with a low tone at the end of questions and to a disappearance of the P600 effect. These results support the claim that semantic context plays a major role in disentangling the tonal information from the intonational information, and thus, in resolving the on-line conflict between intonation and tone. However, the ERP data indicate that the introduction of a semantic context does not entirely eliminate on-line processing problems for words at the end of questions. This is revealed by the presence of an N400 effect for words with a low lexical tone and for words with a high-mid lexical tone at the end of questions. The ERP data thus show that, while semantic context helps in the eventual lexical identification, it makes the deviation of the contextually expected lexical tone from the actual acoustic signal more salient.

The Effect of Rate Reduction on Signaling Prosodic Contrasts in Dysarthria

Background/Aims: To understand how reducing speaking rate alters prosodic contrasts in speakers with dysarthria (DYS) and healthy controls (HC). Methods: Seven male speakers with DYS (mean age = 34.9) and 7 age- and sex-matched HC (mean age = 36.9) produced identical phrases with affirmative (A), contrastive stress (CS) or question (Q) intonation at habitual and slow rate within a naturalistic game. Relative (word-to-word) changes in peak fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration were compared across conditions, groups, and rates. Results: For some contrasts, rate reduction differentially affected the speaking groups, with HC exaggerating and speakers with DYS dampening some prosodic cues. Rate reduction diminished the Q contrast for both groups, with reduced peak F0 differences for HC and reduced word duration differences for HC and with DYS speakers. Slow rate also resulted in decreased lengthening of the final word for all three contrasts, thereby diminishing the Q contrast while exaggerating the CS and A contrasts. Conclusion: Although slow rate may improve segmental intelligibility, it may inadvertently dampen prosodic contrasts for some DYS speakers, thereby impacting communication effectiveness and naturalness. Implications for designing interventions that balance trade-offs between prosodic modulation and segmental clarity are discussed.

Infants' Perception of Intonation: Is It a Statement or a Question?

The ability to distinguish phonetic variations in speech that are relevant to meaning is essential for infants' language development. Previous studies into the acquisition of prosodic categories have focused on lexical stress, lexical pitch accent, or lexical tone. However, very little is known about the developmental course of infants' perception of linguistic intonation. In this study, we investigate infants' perception of the correlates of the statement/yes–no question contrast in a language that marks this sentence type distinction only by prosodic means,EuropeanPortuguese (EP). Using a modified version of the visual habituation paradigm,EP‐learning infants at 5–6 and 8–9 months were able to successfully discriminate segmentally varied, single‐prosodic word intonational phrases presented with statement or yes–no question intonation, demonstrating that they are sensitive to the prosodic cues marking this distinction as early as 5 months and maintain this sensitivity throughout the first year. These results suggest the presence of precocious discrimination abilities for intonation across segmental variation, similarly to previous reports for lexical pitch accent, but unlike previous findings for word stress.

Style, prosodic variation, and the social meaning of intonation

This paper reports on an acoustic analysis of the intonational patterns of declarative questions andwh-questions produced by a group of young adults residing in a rural town of south-central Spain. Question intonation has been reported as highly variable across and within Spanish dialects; recent sociophonetic research on multiple languages suggests that intonational variation may be accounted for by speaking condition (i.e. speech style) in addition to other linguistic and social factors. This study is an initial attempt to examine the potential interactions between speaking condition (read speech vs. task-based dialogue) and social characteristics (speaker sex) on intonational variation. First, it is shown that 12 of the 16 speakers undergo at least one style-shift between speaking conditions; these data are captured in variationist terms, providing empirical assessments about formal and vernacular variants for the two sentence types in question. Second, it is shown that speaker sex differences play a role in style-shifting, and this leads to the hypothesis that variation in declarative questions may have developed as a marker of local identity for Manchego men. All in all, this study offers empirical support that the findings on sociophonetic variation warrant consideration in current models of speech production.

Polar question intonation in five Ghanaian languages

Polar question intonation in five Ghanaian languages

Noting as revealed by “checking” in second language interactions

This paper uses Language Management Theory (LMT) to explore situations in which non-native speakers of a language explicitly reveal that they have noted a potential linguistic deviation. This can be paraphrased as the concept of “checking”, identifiable through the use of question intonation for the trouble source item, phrases such as “is that right?”, or the offering of alternative words or forms. This process is explored in Czech conversations between native speakers and American missionaries. In the analysis, two major points are made: 1) There is a limit to the types of deviations which are noted in this way, as checking is mainly done in cases of potential lexical and morphological deviations, and 2) In order for this strategy to be realized, there must be an appropriate categorial context for its execution, particularly in regard to the categories that speakers assign (or do not assign) to one another situationally, such as “non-native speaker” or “language expert”. In this way, simple management can be directly connected to organized management in that missionaries learning a foreign language are instructed to utilize their interlocutors as “language experts”. The paper also considers methodological tools for LMT analysts to uncover the fact that noting has occurred.

Questions in academic ELF interaction

Abstract This article investigates questions in a higher education setting where English is used as a lingua franca. The study originates from a larger piece of work which investigated the communicative effectiveness of spoken English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) among the teachers and students at a technical university in authentic situations (Björkman, 2010a). The focus in the present article is placed on student-student interaction from group-work sessions, but references to lectures have been included for comparison where appropriate. The questions in the study were first categorized syntactically. Syntactic analyses were followed by phonological analyses of question intonation. The results of the pilot study point to three cues the listener can rely on to be able to register an utterance as a question: syntax with specific reference to word order, utterance-final rising question intonation and the interrogative adverb/pronoun (in Wh-questions only). The results of the analyses in the present study, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, demonstrate that a question is more likely to be registered as such when all available cues are provided for the listener. It seems reasonable to suggest, then, that the speakers in lingua franca settings, with the added complexities at the syntactic level, make use of all available cues to ensure communicative effectiveness. Most importantly, the speakers in this setting appeared to achieve communicative effectiveness by using utterance-final rising question intonation in the absence of the other cues, and not by following unmarked native speaker intonation. The fact that utterance-final question intonation is the most reliable cue among the three shows, yet from another angle in ELF usage, that we cannot assume native speaker usage as the ideal in similar settings.

The intonation of polar questions in Italian: Where is the rise?

Earlier studies on Standard Italian describe polar questions as being characterised by a terminal rise, as opposed to a terminal fall for statements, where a low/falling accentual movement precedes the terminal part of the contour in both sentence types. The same is generally claimed for the Northern and Central Italian varieties (including Florentine, i.e. the variety from which Standard Italian stems), whereas Southern accents are characterised by an accentual rise followed by a terminal fall, being therefore the primary cue for question in non-terminal position. However, a closer look at the existing literature on regional Italian question intonation reveals that such a geographical distribution of intonational features across Italian accents is not that clear-cut. A reason for this discrepancy might be the different speaking styles – here intended as the broad spontaneous vs. read distinction – of the spoken productions analysed. The aim of this paper is to call into question the claim that a terminal rise preceded by an accentual low/fall is the most widespread intonational feature for marking questioning across Italian accents. The goal is to provide a clearer picture of question intonation in Italian by looking at the distribution of the rise as either on terminal or non-terminal position across a large number of varieties, where speech materials have been elicited with the same methodology, and they are therefore homogeneous with respect to speaking style. Intonation analysis has been carried out on spontaneous yes–no questions extracted from the Map Task dialogues collected in the CLIPS national corpus (Corpora e Lessici di Italiano Parlato e Scritto – Corpora and Lexicons of Spoken and Written Italian) covering 15 varieties of Italian. Results of this analysis on the Northern, Central, and Southern polar questions reveals that the accentual rise prevails, and that the distribution of the rise across varieties is independent of the geography.

Perception of intonation in Mandarin Chinese

There is a tendency across languages to use a rising pitch contour to convey question intonation and a falling pitch contour to convey a statement. In a lexical tone language such as Mandarin Chinese, rising and falling pitch contours are also used to differentiate lexical meaning. How, then, does the multiplexing of the F(0) channel affect the perception of question and statement intonation in a lexical tone language? This study investigated the effects of lexical tones and focus on the perception of intonation in Mandarin Chinese. The results show that lexical tones and focus impact the perception of sentence intonation. Question intonation was easier for native speakers to identify on a sentence with a final falling tone and more difficult to identify on a sentence with a final rising tone, suggesting that tone identification intervenes in the mapping of F(0) contours to intonational categories and that tone and intonation interact at the phonological level. In contrast, there is no evidence that the interaction between focus and intonation goes beyond the psychoacoustic level. The results provide insights that will be useful for further research on tone and intonation interactions in both acoustic modeling studies and neurobiological studies.

Temporal characteristics of child-directed speech

Child-directed speech (CDS) is produced with a slower tempo compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet the characterization of CDS as simply slowly spoken speech masks a number of underlying subtleties. We investigated temporal characteristics of CDS as a function of speech register based on a highly controlled set of elicited data. six sentence forms containing five monosyllabic words were read several times in declarative and question intonation with three focus conditions in CDS and ADS. After an evaluation of the data through a perceptual rating task, 2301 sentences produced by one mother and five theater students were segmented at the word-level using forced-alignment tools (Yuan and Liberman, 2008). We found strong effects of the CDS register on duration across the entire sentence. Additionally, elongation in CDS applied even to the syllables without an explicit focal accent and to function words. Our data also demonstrated a highly consistent ratio of the final syllable to the sentence duration both in CDS and ADS across all subjects. These results suggest that the slow speaking rate in CDS cannot be attributed to any single effect such as the exaggerated utterance-final lengthening (Church etal., 2005) or effects of lexical categories (Swanson etal., 1992).

A cross‐linguistic study of intonation: English learners’ production of Mandarin intonation.

Learners of non‐tonal languages have to learn to manipulate complicated F0 patterns arising from the interaction between lexical tones and sentential intonation. This study examines how native English speakers deal with the effect of lexical tones in producing Mandarin intonation. Considering the boundary tone is indicative of statement‐question contrasts, this study compares tonal features of sentential final syllable carrying four lexical tones in different intonations by native Mandarin and native English speakers. Acoustic analyzes indicated that both English and Mandarin speakers produced higher F0 of the boundary tone in question than in statement regardless of the lexical tones, but no difference in duration and intensity between statement‐question contrasts was found. Pitch values in English speakers’ utterances were generally lower than that of Mandarin speakers. Perceptual test showed that the accuracy rate of statements across four lexical tones for English and Mandarin speakers were close to each other, but English speakers’ question utterances were poorly perceived in comparison to Mandarin speakers’ utterances, suggesting that English speakers had difficulty in producing Mandarin question sentences, especially when the final syllable carries tone 1 or tone 4. English speakers’ poor performance on question intonation was attributed to the influence of their native prosodic system.

Question Intonation in Manchego Peninsular Spanish

Question Intonation in Manchego Peninsular Spanish