On the role of prosody in disambiguating wh-exclamatives and wh-interrogatives in Cosenza Italian

International audienceThis work investigates the role of prosody in the perception wh-exclamatives and (information seeking) wh-interrogatives in Cosenza Italian. We used reaction times (RTs) as a diagnostic of listeners' (in)security in sentence type disambiguation during a two-forced choice identification task. Our results show that listeners identify the two sentence types after the end of the utterance in most of the trials, and not before it. This suggests that prosodic cues that occur before the end of the utterance (e.g., in the prenuclear section of the intonational contour) are not strong enough by themselves guide the pragmatic interpretation of the utterances. Furthermore, our study shows that exclamatives are processed faster than interrogatives, but this effect disappears when segmental duration is taken into account

Propiedades prosódicas del foco informativo estrecho en el español del centro de México: Acentos tonales, pérdida de prominencia y fraseo

This paper investigates the different prosodic strategies used for the marking of information focus in Central Mexican Spanish. For this purpose, we carried out a study of the prosodic properties of information focus both in clause final position and in situ. Our results show important differences when compared to other varieties of Spanish. Specifically, we observe that the most frequent accent signaling information focus is a monotonal pitch accent (L* or !H*) and not L+H*. Furthermore, in many cases we observe that the pitch accent is not the only mechanism used to signal the focus: this is because we observe the presence of prosodic edges to the left of the focus, presumably functioning as an additional prosodic cue to identify it. Additionally, while we do not observe deaccenting of post-focal material, we do observe a sequence of non-rising forms (a flat pattern or “de-emphasis”) following the pitch accent that signals an in situ information focus forced by the test. With respect to phonological phrasing, our results confirm the analysis in Prieto (2006), where it is proposed that syntactic constituency is not the primary factor that regulates phrasing in Spanish.En este artículo se busca discutir los recursos prosódicos utilizados para la marcación del foco informativo en el español mexicano central. Para tal fin se elaboró un test diseñado para investigar las propiedades prosódicas del foco informativo en posición final e in situ. Nuestros resultados muestran algunas diferencias importantes entre este conjunto de datos y otras variedades del español. Específicamente, observamos que el acento tonal más frecuente se realiza con la forma monotonal (L* o !H*), y no L+H*. Más aún, en muchos casos observamos que el acento tonal no es el único mecanismo que se usa para marcar el foco. Concretamente, en nuestros resultados se observa la presencia de junturas y cesuras a la izquierda del constituyente focalizado, y que presumiblemente funcionan como una pista prosódica adicional para identificarlo. Por otra parte, no observamos desacentuación del material post-focal, sino una secuencia de formas no ascendentes (un patrón plano a modo de “pérdida de prominencia”) que siguen el acento tonal que marca un foco informativo in situ, forzado por la prueba. Respecto al fraseo fonológico, los resultados confirman el análisis de Prieto (2006), que propone que la estructura sintáctica no es el factor principal que regula el fraseo en español

The Pitch Range of Italians and Americans. A Comparative Study

Linguistic experiments have investigated the nature of F0 span and level in cross-linguistic comparisons. However, only few studies have focused on the elaboration of a general-agreed methodology that may provide a unifying approach to the analysis of pitch range (Ladd, 1996; Patterson and Ladd, 1999; Daly and Warren, 2001; Bishop and Keating, 2010; Mennen et al. 2012). Pitch variation is used in different languages to convey different linguistic and paralinguistic meanings that may range from the expression of sentence modality to the marking of emotional and attitudinal nuances (Grice and Baumann, 2007). A number of factors have to be taken into consideration when determining the existence of measurable and reliable differences in pitch values. Daly and Warren (2001) demonstrated the importance of some independent variables such as language, age, body size, speaker sex (female vs. male), socio-cultural background, regional accents, speech task (read sentences vs. spontaneous dialogues), sentence type (questions vs. statements) and measure scales (Hertz, semitones, ERB etc.). Coherently with the model proposed by Mennen et al. (2012), my analysis of pitch range is based on the investigation of LTD (long-term distributional) and linguistic measures. LTD measures deal with the F0 distribution within a speaker’s contour (e.g. F0 minimum, F0 maximum, F0 mean, F0 median, standard deviation, F0 span) while linguistic measures are linked to specific targets within the contour, such as peaks and valleys (e.g. high and low landmarks) and preserve the temporal sequences of pitch contours. This investigation analyzed the characteristics of pitch range production and perception in English sentences uttered by Americans and Italians. Four experiments were conducted to examine different phenomena: i) the contrast between measures of F0 level and span in utterances produced by Americans and Italians (experiments 1-2); ii) the contrast between the pitch range produced by males and females in L1 and L2 (experiment 1); iii) the F0 patterns in different sentence types, that is, yes-no questions, wh-questions, and exclamations (experiment 2); iv) listeners’ evaluations of pitch span in terms of ±interesting, ±excited, ±credible, ±friendly ratings of different sentence types (experiments 3-4); v) the correlation between pitch span of the sentences and the evaluations given by American and Italian listeners (experiment 3); vi) the listeners’ evaluations of pitch span values in manipulated stimuli, whose F0 span was re-synthesized under three conditions: narrow span, original span, and wide span (experiment 4); vii) the different evaluations given to the sentences by male and female listeners. The results of this investigation supported the following generalizations. First, pitch span more than level was found to be a cue for non-nativeness, because L2 speakers of English used a narrower span, compared to the native norm. What is more, the experimental data in the production studies indicated that the mode of sentences was better captured by F0 span than level. Second, the Italian learners of English were influenced by their L1 and transferred L1 pitch range variation into their L2. The English sentences produced by the Italians had overall higher pitch levels and narrower pitch span than those produced by the Americans. In addition, the Italians used overall higher pitch levels when speaking Italian and lower levels when speaking English. Conversely, their pitch span was generally higher in English and lower in Italian. When comparing productions in English, the Italian females used higher F0 levels than the American females; vice versa, the Italian males showed slightly lower F0 levels than the American males. Third, there was a systematic relation between pitch span values and the listeners’ evaluations of the sentences. The two groups of listeners (the Americans and the Italians) rated the stimuli with larger pitch span as more interesting, exciting and credible than the stimuli with narrower pitch span. Thus, the listeners relied on the perceived pitch span to differentiate among the stimuli. Fourth, both the American and the Italian speakers were considered more friendly when the pitch span of their sentences was widened (wide span manipulation) and less friendly when the pitch span was narrowed (narrow span manipulation). This happened in all the stimuli regardless of the native language of the speakers (American vs. Italian)