Comparative Studies Avesani et al 1995; Hirschberg&Avesani 1997 Production studies comparing English, Italian and Spanish speakers (4 per language) and then English and Italian Potentially ambiguous utterances embedded in contexts to disambiguate: 12/8/2018

English I know William very well. Since his girlfriend left him, he’s done nothing but drink. It’s been such a long time since his separation, that he’s used to living alone. Now, William doesn’t drink because he’s unhappy. He drinks because he’s an alcoholic. There’s something about William that puzzles me. When he’s happy, he has a good time with his friends, and certainly he doesn’t dislike drinking. I think I understand what’s wrong. William doesn’t drink because he’s unhappy. 12/8/2018

Spanish Conozco a Guillermo muy bien. Desde que su novia le dejo, no ha hecho nada mas que beber. Despues de tanto tiempo de su separacion, se ha acostumbrado a vivir solo. Ahora, Guillermo no bebe porque esta triste. Simplement, porque es un alcoholico. Ha algo de Guillermo que no me convence. Cuando le veo feliz, se que se lo pasa, bien con sus amigos, y que no le desagrada beber. Creo que se lo que le pasa. Guillermo no bebe porque esta triste. 12/8/2018

Analysis Target utterances excised and labeled for Intonational contour Relative prominence of pitch accents Different ambiguity contexts compared within languages to find common patterns Common patterns compared across languages 12/8/2018

Results Scope of negation similarly disambiguated between wide and narrow readings by variation of intonational phrasing (one phrase vs. two) Spanish and Italian speakers also varied nuclear stress placement (on verb for wide) English speakers also used continuation rise for wide, falling for narrow Bill doesn’t drink because he’s unhappy. •    PP-attachment disambiguated by phrasing variation (for Italian speakers) 12/8/2018

Association with focus: only consistently disambiguated by all three Quantifier scope disambiguated by varying nuclear stress placement and phrases (for Italian, Spanish, 2 English subjects) Association with focus: only consistently disambiguated by all three 12/8/2018

How do other languages use intonation to convey information? Syntactic ambiguity Semantic ambiguity Discourse phenomena ‘Paralinguistic’ information 12/8/2018

Sag & Liberman on Intonation and Indirect Speech Acts ‘75 Direct vs. Indirect Speech Acts Illocutionary force (e.g. asking) Perlocutionary effect (e.g…..) Can you open that window? Wh-questions ‘Real’: “tilde contour” – why? “hat pattern” 12/8/2018

Negative-implicating rhetorical: Hat pattern (if second accent highest) Evidence? Surprise/redundancy: The blackboard’s painted orange! How do we conclude that any intonation contour “means” X? YNQs: ‘Real’: rising or falling Indirect request: plateau or falling 12/8/2018

Production studies: recorded read skits Tilde  real wh-q Neg-implicating wh: second accent more prominent than first Perception studies: match recording to context Tilde  real wh-q and not other Late peak  either Terminal rise  real ynq 12/8/2018

Conclusion: some contours can ‘freeze’ a pragmatic interpretation? 12/8/2018

Hirschberg & Ward ’92: Rise/fall/rise (L*+H L-H%) The question: why does one contour have different meanings? Uncertainty/incredulity or lack of speaker commitment to some scalar value When will it mean one over the other? Hypothesis: variation in F0, amplitude, duration, voice quality Experiment: 12/8/2018

Record same sentence with each interpretation (pretest) Analyze each token to extract acoustic and prosodic features of hypothesis Resynthesize tokens exchanging all possible combinations of F0, RMS, duration and spectral features of ‘uncertainty’ tokens with ‘incredulity’ tokens 12/8/2018

Forced choice task: uncertainty or incredulity? Results: F0 and spectral features influence uncertainty/incredulity distinction although amplitude and duration also differ 12/8/2018