Kügler Frank, Gollrad Anja
Department Linguistik, Universität Potsdam Potsdam, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2015 Sep 2;6:1254. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01254. eCollection 2015.
This study investigates the phonetics of German nuclear rise-fall contours in relation to contexts that trigger either a contrastive or a non-contrastive interpretation in the answer. A rise-fall contour can be conceived of a tonal sequence of L-H-L. A production study elicited target sentences in contrastive and non-contrastive contexts. The majority of cases realized showed a nuclear rise-fall contour. The acoustic analysis of these contours revealed a significant effect of contrastiveness on the height/alignment of the accent peak as a function of focus context. On the other hand, the height/alignment of the low turning point at the beginning of the rise did not show an effect of contrastiveness. In a series of semantic congruency perception tests participants judged the congruency of congruent and incongruent context-stimulus pairs based on three different sets of stimuli: (i) original data, (ii) manipulation of accent peak, and (iii) manipulation of the leading low. Listeners distinguished nuclear rise-fall contours as a function of focus context (Experiment 1 and 2), however not based on manipulations of the leading low (Experiment 3). The results suggest that the alignment and scaling of the accentual peak are sufficient to license a contrastive interpretation of a nuclear rise-fall contour, leaving the rising part as a phonetic onglide, or as a low tone that does not interact with the contrastivity of the context.
本研究调查了德语核心升降调轮廓的语音特征，以及在答案中引发对比性或非对比性解读的语境。升降调轮廓可被视为一个L-H-L的音调序列。一项产出研究在对比性和非对比性语境中引出了目标句子。所实现的大多数情况都呈现出核心升降调轮廓。对这些轮廓的声学分析揭示了对比性对作为焦点语境函数的重音峰值高度/对齐方式的显著影响。另一方面，升调开始时低转折点的高度/对齐方式并未显示出对比性的影响。在一系列语义一致性感知测试中，参与者根据三组不同的刺激判断一致和不一致的语境-刺激对的一致性：（i）原始数据，（ii）重音峰值的操纵，以及（iii）起始低音的操纵。听众能够根据焦点语境区分核心升降调轮廓（实验1和2），但不是基于起始低音的操纵（实验3）。结果表明，重音峰值的对齐和缩放足以支持对核心升降调轮廓的对比性解读，使升调部分成为语音上的滑音，或成为与语境对比性无关的低调。
