The interpretation of prosody in disjunctive questions

Kathryn Pruitt, Floris Roelofsen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

Alternative questions differ prosodically from identically worded disjunctive yes/no questions in their accentual characteristics and their final pitch contour. Alternative questions are canonically pronounced with a final fall and with pitch accents on all disjuncts, while disjunctive yes/no questions are canonically pronounced with a final rise and generally without pitch accents on every disjunct. This article presents an experiment investigating the importance of these prosodic features in disambiguation. The experiment shows that the final contour is the most informative prosodic feature. Accentual characteristics also play a significant role, but, contrary to what is often assumed in the literature, cannot force an alternative question interpretation or a yes/no question interpretation on their own. Several theories of disjunctive questions are discussed in the light of these experimental results.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)632-650
Number of pages19
JournalLinguistic Inquiry
Volume44
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2013
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Alternative questions
  • Disjunction
  • Intonational meaning
  • Prosody

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language

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