Prosodic signalling of (un)expected information in South Swedish : an interactive manipulation experiment

• Starting from the German pitch peak timing categories and their communicative functions, it is asked how these functions would be expressed in South Swedish. The aim is to get a first impression as regards potentially relevant prosodic parameters associated with the expression of expected vs. unexpected information in South Swedish. For that, an interactive manipulation experiment is conducted, where subjects manipulate the pitch contour and duration of monosyllabic test utterances until the sound output adequately represents a given communicative function. Swedish has a tonal word accent distinction, and all test words have accent 1, normally produced with an early pitch fall. It is thus hypothesized that in South Swedish, expected vs. unexpected information will not be expressed through a different pitch peak timing, as in German. The results indeed clearly hint at unexpected information being signalled by means of a higher, rather than a later pitch peak.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

word accent

unexpected

expected

pitch

timing

swedish

prosody

attitude

Publikations- och innehållstyp

kon (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)