1. 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:
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2. 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.
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3. 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.
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4. 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
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5. 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)
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6. 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
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7. How do other languages use intonation to convey information?
Syntactic ambiguity
Semantic ambiguity
Discourse phenomena
‘Paralinguistic’ information
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8. 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”
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9. 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
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10. 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
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11. Conclusion: some contours can ‘freeze’ a pragmatic interpretation?
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12. 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:
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13. 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
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14. Forced choice task: uncertainty or incredulity?
Results: F0 and spectral features influence uncertainty/incredulity distinction although amplitude and duration also differ
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