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Meanings of Intonational Contours

Julia HirschbergCS 6998

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Today

Approaches to understanding contour meaning What scheme for describing intonation do

they use?What difference does this make?

What kind of evidence do they look at?Which is most persuasive?Which is easiest to study?How would you determine what an intonational

contour ‘means’?

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Sag & Liberman on Intonation and Indirect Speech Acts ‘75

Direct vs. Indirect Speech Acts Illocutionary force (e.g. asking) Perlocutionary effect (e.g…..) Can you open that window?

Wh-questions ‘Real’:

“tilde contour” – why?“hat pattern”

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Negative-implicating rhetorical: Hat pattern (if second accent highest)Evidence?

• Surprise/redundancy: The blackboard’s painted orange!

How do we conclude that any intonation contour “means” X?

YNQs: ‘Real’: rising or falling Indirect request: plateau or falling

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Production studies: recorded read skits Tilde real wh-q Neg-implicating wh: second accent more

prominent than firstPerception studies: match recording to

context Tilde real wh-q and not other Late peak either Terminal rise real ynq

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Conclusion: some contours can ‘freeze’ a pragmatic interpretation?

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Hirschberg & Ward ’92: Rise/fall/rise (L*+H L-H%)

The question: why does one contour have different meanings? Uncertainty/incredulity or lack of

speaker commitment to some scalar value

When will it mean one over the other?Hypothesis: variation in F0, amplitude,

duration, voice qualityExperiment:

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Record same sentence with each interpretation (pretest)

Analyze each token to extract acoustic and prosodic features of hypothesis

Resynthesize tokens exchanging all possible combinations of F0, RMS, duration and spectral features of ‘uncertainty’ tokens with ‘incredulity’ tokens

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Forced choice task: uncertainty or incredulity?

Results: F0 and spectral features influence uncertainty/incredulity distinction although amplitude and duration also differ

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A Compositional Account (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg ’92)

Contours convey relationahips Between current, prior, and following

utterances Between propositional content and

mutual beliefsContour meanings are composites of the

meanings of their pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tones

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Pitch Accents

Convey information status about discourse references, modifiers, predicates and their relationship to S and H’s mutual beliefs H*: X is new and predicated

My name is H* Mark H* Liberman H-H% L*: X is salient but not part of the speaker’s

predication…L* Stalin was L* right H-H%

H*+L: X is inferable from S and H’s mutual beliefs and part of the predication

H*+L Don’t H*+L forget to H*+L take your H* lunch L-L%

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H+L* (H+!H*): X is inferable from S and H’s mutual beliefs but not part of predicationShe’s H+L* teething L-L%

L*+H: X is part of a scale but not part of the predication…I fed the L*+H goldfish L-H%

L+H*: X is part of a scale and in S and H’s mutual beliefs (narrow focus)I don’t L+H* want L+H* shrimp L-H% I want L+H*

lobster L-L%

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Phrase Accents

Convey relationships among intermediate phrases, such as which form part of larger interpretive units L-: X L- Y means X and Y are interpreted

separately from one anotherDo you want a sandwich L- or would you like a

soda

H-: X H- Y means X and Y should be interpreted togetherDo you want apple juice H- or orange juice

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Boundary Tones

Signal the directionality of interpretation of intonational phrases H%: X H% Y means interpret X wrt Y

You made seven errors L-H%What a shame L-L%We don’t have time to continue today.

L%: X L% Y means no directionality of interpretation suggested

You made seven errors L-L%What a shame L-H%We don’t have time to continue today.

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Unresolved QuestionsHow do the meanings of pitch accents in a

single phrase combine?The L* blackboard’s painted H* orange L-L%

How do we distinguish the meaning of a phrase accent from that of a boundary tone – especially in intonational phrases with a single intermediate phrase? E.g. H* H-L% (plateau) vs. H*H-H% (high-rise

question) vs. H*L-L% (declarative) Is this framework useful for investigating

contour meaning? E.g. downstepped contours, H+L*

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Next Week

Discussion questionsProject description and preliminary

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