17 Feb 2004

Sue Peppe (QMUC)

From data collected in the course of administering a prosody assessment procedure, we show that it is apparently harder to distinguish pitch-accent in rising contours than in falling ones, and that when an utterance with rising contour is spliced into alternative contexts, the place of pitch accent within the utterance is likely to be assigned differently, according to the influence of context on pitch-accent expectation in the listener. Furthermore, using data from judgment reliability testing, we show that listeners tend to be certain of where pitch accent occurs in what they hear, and are reluctant to opt for a judgment of 'ambiguous'. We investigate some avenues as to why judgments are more likely to concur in falling than in rising contours, and suggest some implications (for communication) of errors in assignment of pitch-accent, as relevant for varieties of English where rising contours / high terminals are the norm.

[back to PWorkshop Archives]

<owner-pworkshop@ling.ed.ac.uk>