Gyuris, Beáta

Mády, Katalin

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Low phrase-initial boundary tone in Hungarian exclamativesKatalin Ma´dy & Bea´ta Gyuris, Research Institute for Linguistics, HAS, BudapestIntroduction. The exclamative sentence type is traditionally considered to be one of the fivemajor sentence types in Hungarian. Whereas all traditional descriptions (cf. [6]) agree that theformal feature distinguishing exclamatives from representatives of other sentence types is intona-tion, no systematic investigation into the phonetic and phonological properties of this (allegedly)formal defining feature has taken place so far. Curiously, exclamatives are also missing from [3]’ssystematic description of the prosody of the various sentence types in Hungarian. [5] and [7], in-vestigating the syntactic properties wh-exclamatives describe their prosody as consisting of a“hightone followed by a slow descent” and a “stress on the E[xclamative]-phrase and falling intonationfollowing it”, respectively. [8] argues when comparing what he refers to as string-identical excla-mations and statements that the former may be distinguished from the latter on the basis of awidened pitch range.The prosodic properties of German exclamative sentences were investigated in a series of ex-periments by Batliner [1, 2]. The perception experiments reported in [1] show that although therise of the height of the f0-peak and the movement of the peak out of its neutral position con-tributes to the relevant sentence being classified an exclamative rather than as a declarative, thereis no single prosodic factor that unambiguously marks a sentence as an exclamative that can beassigned to both sentence types on the basis of its constituent structure. [2], comparing verb-initialsentences equally classifiable as interrogatives and exclamatives finds that the probability of theclassification of a sentence as an exclamative decreases with the increase of the height of the finalrise, and increases with the increase of the range of the initial fall.In a still ongoing study, we investigate the prosodic properties of wh-exlamatives, which [7]considers a genuine subtype of the exclamative sentence type, and whose representatives are stringidentical to or display a systematic word order difference with respect to their interrogative coun-terparts. This abstract contains some preliminary results.Experiment. In the first part of the experiment, segmentally identical forms of wh-questionsand exclamatives were used. Wh-questions have a falling intonation contour in Hungarian, and thenuclear accent is located on the question pronoun which is usually the first accented word of thesentence. One form of exclamatives is segmentally identical with wh-questions. E.g. the syntacticform “How slowly was he driving?” can be used as a real question or as an exclamative “Howslowly he was driving!” without a change in word order in Hungarian.Ten sentences were analysed, each representing a construction that has been claimed to becharacterisable both as an interrogative and an exclamative. Each target sentence was presentedin two contexts consisting of up to three sentences that were only compatible with the formerinterpreted either as a question or as an exclamation. Results are based on 4 speakers whoserealisations were extremely homogenous. Questions were always realised with an H*+L pitchaccent followed by deaccented words on which pitch remained low throughout the sentence. On theother hand, exclamatives were always realised with L*+H accents after which pitch was graduallyfalling towards the end of the sentence but remained higher than in questions. The f0 maximum inexclamations was higher than in questions (see Fig. 1). In terms of prosody, exclamatives differedfrom questions in three respects: (1) they were realised with rising rather than falling pitch accents,(2) f0 maxima were higher, and (3) also utterance-final f0 was higher than for questions. It seemsthat while questions end with a low boundary tone, exclamations are unspecified for their phrase-final boundary tone (the existence of 0% boundary tones was suggested by [9] for the calling contourin Hungarian). However, it is not clear how the different pitch accents can be explained.A second set of data was collected in which target sentences were preceded by typically deac-cented interjections such as ‘so’ or ‘gee’. In this data set, f0 peaks and also phrase-initial f0 werelower for exclamatives than for questions (Fig. 2). The seemingly contradictory results from thetwo data sets can be explained if the presence of a sentence-initial %L boundary tone is hypothe-sised for Hungarian exclamatives, and a %H tone for questions. In this interpretation, not the f0of the accent peak by itself, but the difference between the sentence-initial f0 and that of the peakis relevant.A phrase-initial boundary tone that is also proposed for Dutch [4] could also explain whyutterance-initial pitch accents with a rising pattern (L*+H or L+H*) that are often used forprefocal units in Hungarian usually start from a higher f0 than is observed for other L*+H accentslater in the sentence. The relevance of the phrase-initial boundary tone for sentence mode will betested in perception experiments in the close future.Time (s)6.435 7.492Pitch (Hz)100300Time (s)5.411 6.517Pitch (Hz)100300Figure 1: Wh-interrogative (left) and wh-exclamative (right) with sentence-initial wh-expression.Time (s)6.461 7.735Pitch (Hz)100350Time (s)10.95 12.29Pitch (Hz)100350Figure 2: Wh-interrogative (left) and wh-exclamative (right) with sentence-initial interjection,followed by a wh-expression.References[1] Batliner, A. 1988. Der Exklamativ: mehr als Aussage oder doch nur mehr oder wenigerAussage? Experimente zur Rolle von Ho¨he und Position des F0-Gipfels. In: Altmann, H.,(ed), Intonationsforschungen. Tu¨bingen: Niemeyer 243–271. [The exclamative: more thandeclarative or more or less declarative? Experiments on height and position of the f0 peak].[2] Batliner, A. 1989. Wieviel Halbto¨ne braucht die Frage? Merkmale, Dimensionen, Kategorien.In: Altmann, H., Batliner, A., Oppenrieder, W., (eds), Zur Intonation von Modus und Fokusim Deutschen. Tu¨bingen: Niemeyer 111–162. [How many semitones does a question need?Features, dimensions, categories].[3] Fo´nagy, I., Magdics, K. 1967. A magyar besze´d dallama [The melody of Hungarian speech].Budapest: Akade´miai Kiado´.[4] Gussenhoven, C. 2005. Transcription of Dutch intonation. In: Prosodic typology. Oxford:University Press 118–145.[5] Ka´lma´n, L. 2001. Magyar le´ıro´ nyelvtan I: mondattan. Budapest: Tinta. [A descriptivegrammar of Hungarian: syntax.].[6] Ka´roly, S. 1964. A mondatfajta´k vizsga´lata a funkcio´ e´s forma szempontja´bo´l. Nyelvtudoma´nyiKo¨zleme´nyek 66, 67–88.[7] Lipta´k, A. 2006. Word order in Hungarian exclamatives. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 53, 343–391.[8] Varga, L. 2002. Intonation and stress: evidence from Hungarian. Basingstoke & New York:Palgrave Macmillan.[9] Varga, L. 2008. The calling contour in Hungarian and English. Phonology 25, 469–497.

Low phrase-initial boundary tone in Hungarian exclamatives

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