Between Fall and Fall-Rise: Substance-Function Relations in German Phrase-Final Intonation Contours
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G. Ambrazaitis
Abstract
This study investigates an intonation contour of German whose status has notbeen established yet: a globally falling contour with a slight rise at the very end ofthe phrase (FSR). The contour may be said to lie on a phonetic continuum betweenfalling (F) and falling-rising (FR) contours. It is hypothesized that F, FR and FSR dif-ferwith respect to their communicative functions: F is terminal, FR is non-terminal,and FSR is pseudo-terminal, respectively. The hypotheses were tested in two steps.First, measurements in a labelled corpus of spontaneous speech provided the nec-essarybackground information on the phonetics of the contours. In the secondstep, the general hypothesis was approached in a perceptual experiment using theparadigm of a semantic differential: 49 listeners judged 17 systematically gener-atedstimuli on nine semantic scales, such as ‘impolite/polite’. The hypotheses weregenerally confirmed. Both F and FSR were associated with a conclusive statement,while FR was more likely to be judged as marking a question. FSR differs from F inthat it does not express features such as categoricalness, dominance or impolite-ness.The results are interpreted as an instance of the frequency code: the additionof a slight rise means avoidance of extremely low F0 ; the functional consequence isa reduction of communicated dominance.
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© 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Special Section
- Contents
- Further Section
- Contents Vol. 62, 2005
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Original Paper
- Parallel Encoding of Focus and Interrogative Meaning in Mandarin Intonation
- Timing and Communicative Functions of Pitch Contours
- Exploring the Influence of Vocal Emotion Expression on Communicative Effectiveness
- Methodological Imperatives for Investigating the Phonetic Organization and Phonological Structures of Spontaneous Speech
- From Words to Actions: The Phonetics of Eigenlijk in Two Communicative Contexts
- Articulatory Planning Is Continuous and Sensitive to Informational Redundancy
- The Communicative Functions of Final Rises in Finnish Intonation
- Acoustic Patterns and Communicative Functions of Phrase-Final F0 Rises in German: Activating and Restricting Contours
- Between Fall and Fall-Rise: Substance-Function Relations in German Phrase-Final Intonation Contours
- Exploring Prosody in Interaction Control
- A Re-Evaluation of the Nature of Speech Errors in Normal and Disordered Speakers
- Further Section
- Libri
- Index autorum Vol. 62, 2005
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Special Section
- Contents
- Further Section
- Contents Vol. 62, 2005
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Original Paper
- Parallel Encoding of Focus and Interrogative Meaning in Mandarin Intonation
- Timing and Communicative Functions of Pitch Contours
- Exploring the Influence of Vocal Emotion Expression on Communicative Effectiveness
- Methodological Imperatives for Investigating the Phonetic Organization and Phonological Structures of Spontaneous Speech
- From Words to Actions: The Phonetics of Eigenlijk in Two Communicative Contexts
- Articulatory Planning Is Continuous and Sensitive to Informational Redundancy
- The Communicative Functions of Final Rises in Finnish Intonation
- Acoustic Patterns and Communicative Functions of Phrase-Final F0 Rises in German: Activating and Restricting Contours
- Between Fall and Fall-Rise: Substance-Function Relations in German Phrase-Final Intonation Contours
- Exploring Prosody in Interaction Control
- A Re-Evaluation of the Nature of Speech Errors in Normal and Disordered Speakers
- Further Section
- Libri
- Index autorum Vol. 62, 2005
