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Production and perception of contrast: The case of the rise-fall contour in German

  • This study investigates the phonetics of German nuclear rise-fall contours in relation to contexts that trigger either a contrastive or a non-contrastive interpretation in the answer. A rise-fall contour can be conceived of a tonal sequence of L-H-L. A production study elicited target sentences in contrastive and non-contrastive contexts. The majority of cases realized showed a nuclear rise-fall contour. The acoustic analysis of these contours revealed a significant effect of contrastiveness on the height/alignment of the accent peak as a function of focus context. On the other hand, the height/alignment of the low turning point at the beginning of the rise did not show an effect of contrastiveness. In a series of semantic congruency perception tests participants judged the congruency of congruent and incongruent context-stimulus pairs based on three different sets of stimuli: (i) original data, (ii) manipulation of accent peak, and (iii) manipulation of the leading low. Listeners distinguished nuclear rise-fall contours as a functionThis study investigates the phonetics of German nuclear rise-fall contours in relation to contexts that trigger either a contrastive or a non-contrastive interpretation in the answer. A rise-fall contour can be conceived of a tonal sequence of L-H-L. A production study elicited target sentences in contrastive and non-contrastive contexts. The majority of cases realized showed a nuclear rise-fall contour. The acoustic analysis of these contours revealed a significant effect of contrastiveness on the height/alignment of the accent peak as a function of focus context. On the other hand, the height/alignment of the low turning point at the beginning of the rise did not show an effect of contrastiveness. In a series of semantic congruency perception tests participants judged the congruency of congruent and incongruent context-stimulus pairs based on three different sets of stimuli: (i) original data, (ii) manipulation of accent peak, and (iii) manipulation of the leading low. Listeners distinguished nuclear rise-fall contours as a function of focus context (Experiment 1 and 2), however not based on manipulations of the leading low (Experiment 3). The results suggest that the alignment and scaling of the accentual peak are sufficient to license a contrastive interpretation of a nuclear rise-fall contour, leaving the rising part as a phonetic onglide, or as a low tone that does not interact with the contrastivity of the context.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author details:Frank Kügler, Anja Gollrad
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01254
ISSN:1664-1078
Pubmed ID:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26388795
Title of parent work (English):Frontiers in psychology
Publisher:Frontiers Research Foundation
Place of publishing:Lausanne
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2015
Publication year:2015
Release date:2017/03/27
Tag:German intonation; perception of contrast; production of contrast; rise-fall contour; semantic-congruency task
Volume:6
Number of pages:17
Funding institution:DFG [KU 2323/1-2, SFB 632]
Organizational units:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik
Peer review:Referiert
Publishing method:Open Access
Institution name at the time of the publication:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
External remark:Zweitveröffentlichung in der Schriftenreihe Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe ; 413
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