This paper tested the ability of Mandarin learners of German, whose native language has lexical t... more This paper tested the ability of Mandarin learners of German, whose native language has lexical tone, to imitate pitch accent contrasts in German, an intonation language. In intonation languages, pitch accents do not convey lexical information; also, pitch accents are sparser than lexical tones as they only associate with prominent words in the utterance. We compared two kinds of German pitch-accent contrasts: (1) a “non-merger” contrast, which Mandarin listeners perceive as different and (2) a “merger” contrast, which sounds more similar to Mandarin listeners. Speakers of a tone language are generally very sensitive to pitch. Hypothesis 1 (H1) therefore stated that Mandarin learners produce the two kinds of contrasts similarly to native German speakers. However, the documented sensitivity to tonal contrasts, at the expense of processing phrase-level intonational contrasts, may generally hinder target-like production of intonational pitch accents in the L2 (Hypothesis 2, H2). Finall...
This visual world eye tracking study tests how f0 affects stress perception in online speech comp... more This visual world eye tracking study tests how f0 affects stress perception in online speech comprehension. The screen showed segmentally overlapping cohort pairs with different stress patterns (WSW/SWW) together with two distractors. In experimental trials, auditory stimuli referred to the WSW cohort member, which was presented with a medial-peak (L+H* L-%) or an early-peak pitch accent (H+L* L-%). Prior to segmental disambiguation, participants fixated the SWW stress competitor more when the WSW target was presented with an early-peak accent. Hence, the peak position affects lexical activation, such that pitch peaks preceding stressed syllables in WSW words temporarily activate SWW words.
Questions can be marked as rhetorical by their prosodic realisation. In two eye-tracking experime... more Questions can be marked as rhetorical by their prosodic realisation. In two eye-tracking experiments, we tested whether wh-questions can be interpreted as rhetorical (RQ) or information-seeking (ISQ) based on prosody. We manipulated nuclear pitch accent type (rise-fall with a late-peak L*+H vs. falling with an early-peak H+!H*) and voice quality (breathy vs. modal) and investigated the contribution of the modal particle denn. Participants had to decide whether they heard an RQ or ISQ by clicking on one of two labels. Experiment 1 presented listeners with wh-questions containing the modal particle denn. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 without the particle. Results showed that late-peak accent and breathy voice quality led to a rhetorical interpretation, while earlypeak accent with modal voice quality was interpreted as information-seeking. The presence of the particle slightly strengthened these interpretations. Listeners decided faster when presented with late-peak/breathy and early-peak/modal compared to the other conditions. Fixation data showed different sensitivity to the prosodic cues depending on the presence of denn. In sum, listeners can use the prosodic realisation of wh-questions to interpret them as rhetorical or not, i.e. contextual linguistic information and other means (e.g., syntactic or lexical) are not strictly necessary.
This paper provides a survey of our knowledge of the prosody of rhetorical questions, i.e. questi... more This paper provides a survey of our knowledge of the prosody of rhetorical questions, i.e. questions that do not require an answer and try to commit the listener to the presupposed answer, as compared to the prosody of string-identical genuine, information seeking-questions. The survey includes semantic literature on questions, corpus data, and experimental evidence from production and perception experiments. It covers a range of typologically different languages (German, English, Icelandic, Italian, Standard Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, French) that have different word-level and phrase-level characteristics. The main finding is.that rhetorical and information-seeking questions differ reliably in terms of the following prosodic characteristics: (i) F0-features (e.g., position and type of pitch accent, type of boundary tone, as well as more global f0-parameters, depending on language type); (ii) duration / speaking rate (rhetorical questions are typically longer / produced with slower speaking rate than information-seeking questions). Often, but not always, rhetorical questions are produced with non-modal voice quality.
The present study compares the prosody of string-identical information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetori... more The present study compares the prosody of string-identical information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Standard Chinese, in polar and wh-questions. Standard Chinese has four lexical tones and is hence a prime candidate for studying interactions between lexical tone and post-lexical intonation. In a production study, ten Standard Chinese speakers from the Beijing area read short context descriptions (intended to trigger an ISQ or an RQ reading), and subsequently produced target interrogatives. Results reveal RQs to be overall lower in f0, preserving the shape of the lexical tone. Syllables carrying Tone 3 showed the smallest difference in f0 between illocution types, however. Additionally, RQs had longer durations than ISQs and showed more instances of glottalized voice, mainly towards the end of the interrogative. Post-hoc correlation analyses with f0, duration, and voice quality as dependent variables indicated that the cues to RQs are modified together, rather than compensating for each other. Hence, similar to intonation languages, Standard Chinese uses prosody (f0, duration, and voice quality) to distinguish between illocution type (ISQ vs. RQ). Our findings suggest f0, duration, and voice quality to be cross-linguistic signals of rhetorical meaning; their implementation is language-specific.
We present a novel interactive approach for the visual analysis of intonation contours. Audio dat... more We present a novel interactive approach for the visual analysis of intonation contours. Audio data are processed algorithmically and presented to researchers through interactive visualizations. To this end, we automatically analyze the data using machine learning in order to find groups or patterns. These results are visualized with respect to meta-data. We present a flexible, interactive system for the analysis of prosodic data. Using realworld application examples, one containing preprocessed, the other raw data, we demonstrate that our system enables researchers to interact dynamically with the data at several levels and by means of different types of visualizations, thus arriving at a better understanding of the data via a cycle of hypothesis generation and testing that takes full advantage of our visual processing abilities.
The field of psychology has become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and ... more The field of psychology has become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability. Infancy researchers face specific challenges related to replicability: high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations, amongst other factors. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multi-site study aimed at 1) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically-important phenomenon and 2) examining methodological, situational, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult were created using semi-naturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings in North American English. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using...
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2015
Previous research has shown that listeners from tonal languages are better at processing tone com... more Previous research has shown that listeners from tonal languages are better at processing tone compared to speakers from non-tonal languages. However, most of this research has tested Asian tone languages, particularly those which have many tonal contrasts and a dense tone-to-syllable association. In this paper we investigate the mental representation of derived tones in Bemba, a Bantu language that has a two-way tone contrast but which shows robust tone spreading patterns. Specifically, we test ternary high-tone spreading, a process that is unique from a phonological perspective. In a production task we test whether ternary spread can be extended to non-words. We complement this with an AX discrimination task comparing binary vs ternary spread, which are phonologically contrastive, on the one hand, with a tonally similarly salient but non-phonologically relevant contrast, on the other. We show that in both the production and perception of non-words, ternary spread is distinct from binary spread, suggesting that derived tone is equally mentally represented as lexical tone is in Asian tone languages.
All these forms intuitively raise the same issue {p, ¬ p}, that is, they ultimately induce a choi... more All these forms intuitively raise the same issue {p, ¬ p}, that is, they ultimately induce a choice between p and ¬ p. However, the forms cannot be used interchangeably. The choice of form has been argued to depend (possibly among other things) on two kinds of epistemic bias of the speaker (Ladd 1981, Büring & Gunlogson 2000, Sudo 2013, Domaneschi et al. 2017): original bias and contextual evidence bias. Original bias is defined in (2) (Domaneschi et al. 2017). For example, a HiNQ n’t p? mandatorily expresses an original speaker bias for proposition p that need not attend the PosQ counterpart (Ladd 1981). This is illustrated in (3): The PosQ version (3-a) can be used to ask an unbiased question at court but (3-b) would declare a bias for p.
This chapter provides an overview of (i) the intonational properties of second language (L2) spee... more This chapter provides an overview of (i) the intonational properties of second language (L2) speech above the word level, (ii) timing aspects, and (iii) the perception and processing of the target languages’ prosody by L2 learners. Intonationally, the chapter summarizes prosodic differences between different learner groups regarding prosodic marking of information structure (highlighting of new or contrastive information), illocution (questions or assertions), and prosodic phrasing. Apart from phonological differences, the chapter also reports phonetic differences between native language (L1) and L2 intonation, observed in particular in the alignment and scaling of the tonal targets in pitch accents. Finally, the chapter summarizes findings on the prosodic marking of expressive prosody in L2 speech. Timing-wise, it focuses on the phenomena of rhythm, tempo, and fluency in L2 speech. The chapter next moves on to an overview of work on the perception and interpretation of intonation o...
Infant-directed speech is often seen as a predictor for infants' speech processing abilities,... more Infant-directed speech is often seen as a predictor for infants' speech processing abilities, for instance speech segmentation or word learning. In this paper, we examine the syntactic distribution (position), accentuation and prosodic phrasing of German verb forms and discuss that many verb forms are prime candidates for early segmentation: they frequently appear at the start or end of prosodic phrases; if they are not phrase-initial, they are often preceded by closed-class word forms and they are frequently accented (imperative verb forms: 72% of the cases, infinitive verb forms: 82% of the cases). It thus appears that German infants ought to be able to extract verbs as early as nouns, given appropriate stimulus materials.
Different polar question forms (e.g., Do you / Do you not / Don’t you / Really? Do you... have a ... more Different polar question forms (e.g., Do you / Do you not / Don’t you / Really? Do you... have a car?) are not equally appropriate in all situations. The present experiments investigate which combinations of original speaker belief and contextual evidence influence the choice of question type in English and German. Our results show that both kinds of bias interact: in both languages, positive polar questions are typically selected when there is no original speaker belief and positive or non-informative contextual evidence; low negation questions (Do you not...?) are most frequently chosen when no original belief meets negative contextual evidence; high negation questions (Don’t you...?) are prompted when positive original speaker belief is followed by negative or non-informative contextual evidence; positive questions with really are produced most frequently when a negative original bias is combined with positive contextual evidence. In string-identical forms, there are prosodic dif...
English and German have similar prosody, but their speakers realize some pitch falls (not rises) ... more English and German have similar prosody, but their speakers realize some pitch falls (not rises) in subtly different ways. We here test for asymmetry in perception. An ABX discrimination task requiring F0 slope or duration judgements on isolated vowels revealed no cross-language difference in duration or F0 fall discrimination, but discrimination of rises (realized similarly in each language) was less accurate for English than for German listeners. This unexpected finding may reflect greater sensitivity to rising patterns by German listeners, or reduced sensitivity by English listeners as a result of extensive exposure to phrase-final rises ("uptalk") in their language.
The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well as inte... more The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well as inter- and intra-speaker variability in f0. Category boundaries thus remain “fuzzy” and it is non-trivial how the (continuous) acoustic space maps onto (discrete) pitch accent categories. We focus on three types of rising-falling contours, which differ in the alignment of L(ow) and H(igh) tones with respect to the stressed syllable. Most of the intonational systems on German have described two rising accent categories, e.g., L+H* and L*+H in the German ToBI system. L+H* has a high-pitched stressed syllable and a low leading tone aligned in the pre-tonic syllable; L*+H a low-pitched stressed syllable and a high trailing tone in the post-tonic syllable. There are indications for the existence of a third category which lies between these two categories, with both L and H aligned within the stressed syllable, henceforth termed (LH)*. In the present paper, we empirically investigate the distincti...
Despite their relatedness, Dutch and German differ in the interpretation of a particular intonati... more Despite their relatedness, Dutch and German differ in the interpretation of a particular intonation contour, the hat pattern. In the literature, this contour has been described as neutral for Dutch, and as contrastive for German. A recent study (Braun & Tagliapietra, in press) supports the idea that Dutch listeners interpret this contour neutrally, compared to the contrastive interpretation of a lexically identical utterance realized with a double peak pattern. In particular, this study showed shorter lexical decision latencies to visual targets (e.g., PELIKAAN, ‘pelican’) following a contrastively related prime (e.g., FLAMINGO, ‘flamingo’) only when the primes were embedded in sentences with a double peak contour, not in sentences with a hat pattern. The present study replicates Experiment 1a of Braun and Tagliapietra with German learners of Dutch. Highly proficient learners of Dutch differed from Dutch natives in that they showed reliable priming effects for both intonation contou...
Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2018
In the JIPA article 'The purpose shapes the vocative: Prosodic realisation of Colombian Spanish v... more In the JIPA article 'The purpose shapes the vocative: Prosodic realisation of Colombian Spanish vocatives', in the list of references, on page 56, the citation of GREGORY Ward and Julia Hirschberg's (1985) article has been mistakenly attributed to NIGEL Ward and Julia Hirschberg. The correct entry is: 'Ward, Gregory & Julia Hirschberg. 1985. Implicating uncertainty: The pragmatics of the fall-rise intonation. Language 61, 747-776.'
While echo questions (EcQs) are often said to be identified by their prosodic properties, there i... more While echo questions (EcQs) are often said to be identified by their prosodic properties, there is no empirical study actually supporting such claim. Focusing on wh-utterances we provide results from a production study, a classifier, and a perception study to argue that prosody is not a reliable cue to identify an inquisitive utterance as EcQ. We also offer a model that unifies the semantics of utterances inquiring about what has just been said (EcQs) and utterances inquiring about ‘non-discursive’ facts, information seeking questions (InfQs), while keeping the interpretation of the utterance true to form.
This paper tested the ability of Mandarin learners of German, whose native language has lexical t... more This paper tested the ability of Mandarin learners of German, whose native language has lexical tone, to imitate pitch accent contrasts in German, an intonation language. In intonation languages, pitch accents do not convey lexical information; also, pitch accents are sparser than lexical tones as they only associate with prominent words in the utterance. We compared two kinds of German pitch-accent contrasts: (1) a “non-merger” contrast, which Mandarin listeners perceive as different and (2) a “merger” contrast, which sounds more similar to Mandarin listeners. Speakers of a tone language are generally very sensitive to pitch. Hypothesis 1 (H1) therefore stated that Mandarin learners produce the two kinds of contrasts similarly to native German speakers. However, the documented sensitivity to tonal contrasts, at the expense of processing phrase-level intonational contrasts, may generally hinder target-like production of intonational pitch accents in the L2 (Hypothesis 2, H2). Finall...
This visual world eye tracking study tests how f0 affects stress perception in online speech comp... more This visual world eye tracking study tests how f0 affects stress perception in online speech comprehension. The screen showed segmentally overlapping cohort pairs with different stress patterns (WSW/SWW) together with two distractors. In experimental trials, auditory stimuli referred to the WSW cohort member, which was presented with a medial-peak (L+H* L-%) or an early-peak pitch accent (H+L* L-%). Prior to segmental disambiguation, participants fixated the SWW stress competitor more when the WSW target was presented with an early-peak accent. Hence, the peak position affects lexical activation, such that pitch peaks preceding stressed syllables in WSW words temporarily activate SWW words.
Questions can be marked as rhetorical by their prosodic realisation. In two eye-tracking experime... more Questions can be marked as rhetorical by their prosodic realisation. In two eye-tracking experiments, we tested whether wh-questions can be interpreted as rhetorical (RQ) or information-seeking (ISQ) based on prosody. We manipulated nuclear pitch accent type (rise-fall with a late-peak L*+H vs. falling with an early-peak H+!H*) and voice quality (breathy vs. modal) and investigated the contribution of the modal particle denn. Participants had to decide whether they heard an RQ or ISQ by clicking on one of two labels. Experiment 1 presented listeners with wh-questions containing the modal particle denn. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 without the particle. Results showed that late-peak accent and breathy voice quality led to a rhetorical interpretation, while earlypeak accent with modal voice quality was interpreted as information-seeking. The presence of the particle slightly strengthened these interpretations. Listeners decided faster when presented with late-peak/breathy and early-peak/modal compared to the other conditions. Fixation data showed different sensitivity to the prosodic cues depending on the presence of denn. In sum, listeners can use the prosodic realisation of wh-questions to interpret them as rhetorical or not, i.e. contextual linguistic information and other means (e.g., syntactic or lexical) are not strictly necessary.
This paper provides a survey of our knowledge of the prosody of rhetorical questions, i.e. questi... more This paper provides a survey of our knowledge of the prosody of rhetorical questions, i.e. questions that do not require an answer and try to commit the listener to the presupposed answer, as compared to the prosody of string-identical genuine, information seeking-questions. The survey includes semantic literature on questions, corpus data, and experimental evidence from production and perception experiments. It covers a range of typologically different languages (German, English, Icelandic, Italian, Standard Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, French) that have different word-level and phrase-level characteristics. The main finding is.that rhetorical and information-seeking questions differ reliably in terms of the following prosodic characteristics: (i) F0-features (e.g., position and type of pitch accent, type of boundary tone, as well as more global f0-parameters, depending on language type); (ii) duration / speaking rate (rhetorical questions are typically longer / produced with slower speaking rate than information-seeking questions). Often, but not always, rhetorical questions are produced with non-modal voice quality.
The present study compares the prosody of string-identical information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetori... more The present study compares the prosody of string-identical information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Standard Chinese, in polar and wh-questions. Standard Chinese has four lexical tones and is hence a prime candidate for studying interactions between lexical tone and post-lexical intonation. In a production study, ten Standard Chinese speakers from the Beijing area read short context descriptions (intended to trigger an ISQ or an RQ reading), and subsequently produced target interrogatives. Results reveal RQs to be overall lower in f0, preserving the shape of the lexical tone. Syllables carrying Tone 3 showed the smallest difference in f0 between illocution types, however. Additionally, RQs had longer durations than ISQs and showed more instances of glottalized voice, mainly towards the end of the interrogative. Post-hoc correlation analyses with f0, duration, and voice quality as dependent variables indicated that the cues to RQs are modified together, rather than compensating for each other. Hence, similar to intonation languages, Standard Chinese uses prosody (f0, duration, and voice quality) to distinguish between illocution type (ISQ vs. RQ). Our findings suggest f0, duration, and voice quality to be cross-linguistic signals of rhetorical meaning; their implementation is language-specific.
We present a novel interactive approach for the visual analysis of intonation contours. Audio dat... more We present a novel interactive approach for the visual analysis of intonation contours. Audio data are processed algorithmically and presented to researchers through interactive visualizations. To this end, we automatically analyze the data using machine learning in order to find groups or patterns. These results are visualized with respect to meta-data. We present a flexible, interactive system for the analysis of prosodic data. Using realworld application examples, one containing preprocessed, the other raw data, we demonstrate that our system enables researchers to interact dynamically with the data at several levels and by means of different types of visualizations, thus arriving at a better understanding of the data via a cycle of hypothesis generation and testing that takes full advantage of our visual processing abilities.
The field of psychology has become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and ... more The field of psychology has become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability. Infancy researchers face specific challenges related to replicability: high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations, amongst other factors. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multi-site study aimed at 1) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically-important phenomenon and 2) examining methodological, situational, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult were created using semi-naturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings in North American English. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using...
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2015
Previous research has shown that listeners from tonal languages are better at processing tone com... more Previous research has shown that listeners from tonal languages are better at processing tone compared to speakers from non-tonal languages. However, most of this research has tested Asian tone languages, particularly those which have many tonal contrasts and a dense tone-to-syllable association. In this paper we investigate the mental representation of derived tones in Bemba, a Bantu language that has a two-way tone contrast but which shows robust tone spreading patterns. Specifically, we test ternary high-tone spreading, a process that is unique from a phonological perspective. In a production task we test whether ternary spread can be extended to non-words. We complement this with an AX discrimination task comparing binary vs ternary spread, which are phonologically contrastive, on the one hand, with a tonally similarly salient but non-phonologically relevant contrast, on the other. We show that in both the production and perception of non-words, ternary spread is distinct from binary spread, suggesting that derived tone is equally mentally represented as lexical tone is in Asian tone languages.
All these forms intuitively raise the same issue {p, ¬ p}, that is, they ultimately induce a choi... more All these forms intuitively raise the same issue {p, ¬ p}, that is, they ultimately induce a choice between p and ¬ p. However, the forms cannot be used interchangeably. The choice of form has been argued to depend (possibly among other things) on two kinds of epistemic bias of the speaker (Ladd 1981, Büring & Gunlogson 2000, Sudo 2013, Domaneschi et al. 2017): original bias and contextual evidence bias. Original bias is defined in (2) (Domaneschi et al. 2017). For example, a HiNQ n’t p? mandatorily expresses an original speaker bias for proposition p that need not attend the PosQ counterpart (Ladd 1981). This is illustrated in (3): The PosQ version (3-a) can be used to ask an unbiased question at court but (3-b) would declare a bias for p.
This chapter provides an overview of (i) the intonational properties of second language (L2) spee... more This chapter provides an overview of (i) the intonational properties of second language (L2) speech above the word level, (ii) timing aspects, and (iii) the perception and processing of the target languages’ prosody by L2 learners. Intonationally, the chapter summarizes prosodic differences between different learner groups regarding prosodic marking of information structure (highlighting of new or contrastive information), illocution (questions or assertions), and prosodic phrasing. Apart from phonological differences, the chapter also reports phonetic differences between native language (L1) and L2 intonation, observed in particular in the alignment and scaling of the tonal targets in pitch accents. Finally, the chapter summarizes findings on the prosodic marking of expressive prosody in L2 speech. Timing-wise, it focuses on the phenomena of rhythm, tempo, and fluency in L2 speech. The chapter next moves on to an overview of work on the perception and interpretation of intonation o...
Infant-directed speech is often seen as a predictor for infants' speech processing abilities,... more Infant-directed speech is often seen as a predictor for infants' speech processing abilities, for instance speech segmentation or word learning. In this paper, we examine the syntactic distribution (position), accentuation and prosodic phrasing of German verb forms and discuss that many verb forms are prime candidates for early segmentation: they frequently appear at the start or end of prosodic phrases; if they are not phrase-initial, they are often preceded by closed-class word forms and they are frequently accented (imperative verb forms: 72% of the cases, infinitive verb forms: 82% of the cases). It thus appears that German infants ought to be able to extract verbs as early as nouns, given appropriate stimulus materials.
Different polar question forms (e.g., Do you / Do you not / Don’t you / Really? Do you... have a ... more Different polar question forms (e.g., Do you / Do you not / Don’t you / Really? Do you... have a car?) are not equally appropriate in all situations. The present experiments investigate which combinations of original speaker belief and contextual evidence influence the choice of question type in English and German. Our results show that both kinds of bias interact: in both languages, positive polar questions are typically selected when there is no original speaker belief and positive or non-informative contextual evidence; low negation questions (Do you not...?) are most frequently chosen when no original belief meets negative contextual evidence; high negation questions (Don’t you...?) are prompted when positive original speaker belief is followed by negative or non-informative contextual evidence; positive questions with really are produced most frequently when a negative original bias is combined with positive contextual evidence. In string-identical forms, there are prosodic dif...
English and German have similar prosody, but their speakers realize some pitch falls (not rises) ... more English and German have similar prosody, but their speakers realize some pitch falls (not rises) in subtly different ways. We here test for asymmetry in perception. An ABX discrimination task requiring F0 slope or duration judgements on isolated vowels revealed no cross-language difference in duration or F0 fall discrimination, but discrimination of rises (realized similarly in each language) was less accurate for English than for German listeners. This unexpected finding may reflect greater sensitivity to rising patterns by German listeners, or reduced sensitivity by English listeners as a result of extensive exposure to phrase-final rises ("uptalk") in their language.
The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well as inte... more The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well as inter- and intra-speaker variability in f0. Category boundaries thus remain “fuzzy” and it is non-trivial how the (continuous) acoustic space maps onto (discrete) pitch accent categories. We focus on three types of rising-falling contours, which differ in the alignment of L(ow) and H(igh) tones with respect to the stressed syllable. Most of the intonational systems on German have described two rising accent categories, e.g., L+H* and L*+H in the German ToBI system. L+H* has a high-pitched stressed syllable and a low leading tone aligned in the pre-tonic syllable; L*+H a low-pitched stressed syllable and a high trailing tone in the post-tonic syllable. There are indications for the existence of a third category which lies between these two categories, with both L and H aligned within the stressed syllable, henceforth termed (LH)*. In the present paper, we empirically investigate the distincti...
Despite their relatedness, Dutch and German differ in the interpretation of a particular intonati... more Despite their relatedness, Dutch and German differ in the interpretation of a particular intonation contour, the hat pattern. In the literature, this contour has been described as neutral for Dutch, and as contrastive for German. A recent study (Braun & Tagliapietra, in press) supports the idea that Dutch listeners interpret this contour neutrally, compared to the contrastive interpretation of a lexically identical utterance realized with a double peak pattern. In particular, this study showed shorter lexical decision latencies to visual targets (e.g., PELIKAAN, ‘pelican’) following a contrastively related prime (e.g., FLAMINGO, ‘flamingo’) only when the primes were embedded in sentences with a double peak contour, not in sentences with a hat pattern. The present study replicates Experiment 1a of Braun and Tagliapietra with German learners of Dutch. Highly proficient learners of Dutch differed from Dutch natives in that they showed reliable priming effects for both intonation contou...
Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2018
In the JIPA article 'The purpose shapes the vocative: Prosodic realisation of Colombian Spanish v... more In the JIPA article 'The purpose shapes the vocative: Prosodic realisation of Colombian Spanish vocatives', in the list of references, on page 56, the citation of GREGORY Ward and Julia Hirschberg's (1985) article has been mistakenly attributed to NIGEL Ward and Julia Hirschberg. The correct entry is: 'Ward, Gregory & Julia Hirschberg. 1985. Implicating uncertainty: The pragmatics of the fall-rise intonation. Language 61, 747-776.'
While echo questions (EcQs) are often said to be identified by their prosodic properties, there i... more While echo questions (EcQs) are often said to be identified by their prosodic properties, there is no empirical study actually supporting such claim. Focusing on wh-utterances we provide results from a production study, a classifier, and a perception study to argue that prosody is not a reliable cue to identify an inquisitive utterance as EcQ. We also offer a model that unifies the semantics of utterances inquiring about what has just been said (EcQs) and utterances inquiring about ‘non-discursive’ facts, information seeking questions (InfQs), while keeping the interpretation of the utterance true to form.
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Papers by Bettina Braun