Volume 41, Issue 1

The author suggests that the following seemingly disparate phenomena have an underlying relationship: (a) cross-language similarities in the intonation contours for statements versus questions, (b) cross-cultural similarities in the vocal expression via intonation of attitude and affect, (c) cross-language patterns in the use of tone, vowels, and consonants in ‘sound symbolic’ vocabulary, (d) cross-species use of F₀ in threatening or non threatening vocalizations, (e) cross-cultural and cross-species use of certain facial expressions (involving distinct mouth shape), and (f) the existence of sexual dimorphism in the vocal anatomy of humans (and certain non humans). He argues that all arise due to an innately specified ‘frequency code’, which associates high acoustic frequency with the primary meaning of ‘small vocalizer’ and thus such secondary meanings as ‘subordinate, submissive, non threatening, desirous of the receiver’s goodwill, etc’ and associates with low acoustic frequency the primary meaning of ‘large vocalizer’ and such secondary meanings as ‘dominant, aggressive, threatening, etc’

(1) When vowel and consonant duration cues are ambiguous between /ku·lÓ™/ and /kulÓ™/ an early F₀ rise, relative to the vowel-consonant boundary, will tend to favor identification of stimuli as /ku lÓ™/, while a later F₀ rise increases the number of /kulÓ™/ judgments somewhat. (2) When vowel duration cues are ambiguous between /’bilisd/ and /bi’lisd/ an F₀ rise before the intervocalic consonant will significantly increase the number of/’bilisd/ identifications, whereas an F₀ rise after the consonant yields more judgments of /’bilisd/. The latter result corroborates the acoustic observation that initial voiced consonants in stressed syllables dissociate tonally from the vowel and join up with the preceding material, if any, to the effect that tonally the stress seems to begin with the vowel.

We investigated whether ‘intrinsic pitch’ (IP) effects occur in connected speech. Fundamental frequency differences between German high and low vowels were measured in two different experimental conditions: (1) a typical laboratory task in which a carrier sentence served as a frame for test vowels; (2) a paragraph reading task in which test vowels occurred in a variety of prosodic environments. By comparing test vowels in comparable segmental and prosodic environments, it was shown that the IP effect does occur in connected speech, but that the size of the differences between high and low vowel fundamental frequency is somewhat smaller than in carrier sentences. Some tentative hypotheses are presented concerning the influence of prosodic environment on the magnitude of IP differences.

In a lexical decision experiment we investigated whether the mental lexicon is accessed directly by a visual code or by phonological mediation. Subjects were asked to make lexical decisions where phonological coding was either beneficial or detrimental. It was found that subjects used phonological coding when it was helpful and abandoned this strategy when it was a hindrance. These results support the hypothesis that lexical decisions can be based on variable coding operations. The fact that subjects were faster in classifying words when they did not rely on phonological codes is consistent with the assumption of faster visual access to the mental lexicon. Taken as a whole, these results are consistent with models which assume phonological coding to take place after lexical access as well as with models postulating parallel access to the mental lexicon. They are not compatible with models postulating mandatory prelexical phonological coding.