1. Meanings of Intonational Contours
Julia Hirschberg
CS 6998
9/21/2018

2. 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’?
9/21/2018

3. 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”
9/21/2018

4. 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
9/21/2018

5. Production studies: recorded read skits Tilde  real wh-q
Neg-implicating wh: second accent more prominent than first
Perception studies: match recording to context
Tilde  real wh-q and not other
Late peak  either
Terminal rise  real ynq
9/21/2018

6. Conclusion: some contours can ‘freeze’ a pragmatic interpretation?
9/21/2018

7. 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 quality
Experiment:
9/21/2018

8. 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
9/21/2018

9. Forced choice task: uncertainty or incredulity?
Results: F0 and spectral features influence uncertainty/incredulity distinction although amplitude and duration also differ
9/21/2018

10. A Compositional Account (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg ’92)
Contours convey relationahips
Between current, prior, and following utterances
Between propositional content and mutual beliefs
Contour meanings are composites of the meanings of their pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tones
9/21/2018

11. 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%
9/21/2018

12. L*+H: X is part of a scale but not part of the predication
H+L* (H+!H*): X is inferable from S and H’s mutual beliefs but not part of predication
She’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%
9/21/2018

13. 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 another
Do you want a sandwich L- or would you like a soda
H-: X H- Y means X and Y should be interpreted together
Do you want apple juice H- or orange juice
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14. 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%
9/21/2018

15. Unresolved Questions
How 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*
9/21/2018

16. Next Week Discussion questions
Project description and preliminary bibliography
9/21/2018