Vanrell Maria del Mar, Mascaró Ignasi, Torres-Tamarit Francesc, Prieto Pilar
Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona - Bellaterra, Spain.
Lang Speech. 2013 Jun;56(Pt 2):163-90. doi: 10.1177/0023830912443942.
Recent studies in the field of intonational phonology have shown that information-seeking questions can be distinguished from confirmation-seeking questions by prosodic means in a variety of languages (Armstrong, 2010, for Puerto Rican Spanish; Grice & Savino, 1997, for Bari Italian; Kügler, 2003, for Leipzig German; Mata & Santos, 2010, for European Portuguese; Vanrell, Mascaró, Prieto, & Torres-Tamarit, 2010, for Catalan). However, all these studies have relied on production experiments and little is known about the perceptual relevance of these intonational cues. This paper explores whether Majorcan Catalan listeners distinguish information- and confirmation-seeking questions by means of two distinct nuclear falling pitch accents. Three behavioral tasks were conducted with 20 Majorcan Catalan subjects, namely a semantic congruity test, a rating test, and a classical categorical perception identification/discrimination test. The results show that a difference in pitch scaling on the leading H tone of the H+L* nuclear pitch accent is the main cue used by Majorcan Catalan listeners to distinguish confirmation questions from information-seeking questions. Thus, while a iH+L* pitch accent signals an information-seeking question (i.e., the speaker has no expectation about the nature of the answer), the H+L* pitch accent indicates that the speaker is asking about mutually shared information. We argue that these results have implications in representing the distinctions of tonal height in Catalan. The results also support the claim that phonological contrasts in intonation, together with other linguistic strategies, can signal the speakers' beliefs about the certainty of the proposition expressed.
近期语调音系学领域的研究表明，在多种语言中，信息寻求疑问句和确认寻求疑问句可以通过韵律手段加以区分（阿姆斯特朗，2010年，关于波多黎各西班牙语；格赖斯和萨维诺，1997年，关于巴里意大利语；屈格勒，2003年，关于莱比锡德语；马塔和桑托斯，2010年，关于欧洲葡萄牙语；范雷尔、马斯卡罗、普列托和托雷斯 - 塔马里特，2010年，关于加泰罗尼亚语）。然而，所有这些研究都依赖于产出实验，对于这些语调线索的感知相关性却知之甚少。本文探讨了马略卡岛加泰罗尼亚语的听众是否通过两种不同的核降调重音来区分信息寻求疑问句和确认寻求疑问句。对20名马略卡岛加泰罗尼亚语使用者进行了三项行为任务，即语义一致性测试、评级测试和经典的范畴感知识别/辨别测试。结果表明，H+L核音高重音的主高音调上的音高缩放差异是马略卡岛加泰罗尼亚语听众区分确认疑问句和信息寻求疑问句的主要线索。因此，当iH+L音高重音表示信息寻求疑问句时（即说话者对答案的性质没有预期），H+L*音高重音则表明说话者在询问共同知晓的信息。我们认为这些结果对于呈现加泰罗尼亚语中音调高度的差异具有启示意义。这些结果还支持了这样一种观点，即语调中的音系对比与其他语言策略一起，可以表明说话者对所表达命题确定性的信念。
