Intonation in Dutch

Language and Speech
http://las.sagepub.com Experiments on the Meaning of Four Types of Single-Accent Intonation Patterns in Dutch
Johanneke Caspers Language and Speech 2000; 43; 127 DOI: 10.1177/00238309000430020101 The online version of this article can be found at: http://las.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/2/127
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LANGUAGE AND SPEECH, 2000, 43 (2), 127 161
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Experiments on the Meaning of Four Types of Single-Accent Intonation Patterns in D utch*

JOHANNEKE CASPERS
Leiden University
KEY WORDS ABSTRACT
The Grammar of Dutch Intonation (GDI) provides a description of the possible intonation contours of Dutch. The GDI distinguishes accent-lending and intonational nonaccent-lending pitch configurations, but refrains from further functional meaning statements. This paper describes an experimental attempt to verify meaning hypotheses for four Dutch single-accent pitch patterns as postulated in the perception linguistic literature. The four pitch accent types were realized on proper names; experiments the abstract meanings, in terms of the manipulation of an element of the background shared between speaker and listener, were incorporated in pitch accents situational contexts, distinguishing between a default and a vocative use of the proper name (orientation). Listeners ranked the four melodic shapes from prosody most to least appropriate in their specific context. After revision of part of the materials a second perception experiment was conducted, in which subjects had to rank four contexts from most to least appropriate for a specific pitch accent type. Results show a distinct effect of orientation on the appropriateness of two of the investigated pitch accent types in the various context types; the other two pitch accent types are associated with the predicted context types (and vice versa) well above chance, indicating the viability of at least two of the linguistic proposals.
Dutch
INTRODUCTION
Intonation plays a role on several levels of linguistic organization; it has been reported to, for example, mark the position of important information and the location of boundaries, to express attitude and emotion, to signal whether a speaker is asking or telling something (sentence type), to mark information status and topic structure, and to play a role in the turn -taking system. For comprehensive surveys of the various functions related to intonation,
* A preliminary version of the present paper, entitled Testing the meaning of four Dutch pitch
accent types, appeared in the Proceedings of the 1997 Eurospeech Conference (pp.863 866). Acknowledgments: This research was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under project #300 75 001. Tina Cambier- Langeveld, Carlos Gussenhoven, Vincent van Heuven, Nel Keijsper, Bob Kirsner, Cecilia Od, Helmer Strik, Jacques Terken, and an anonymous referee are thanked for their valuable comments. I am grateful to Cecilia Od for transcribing and judging the used materials and to Jos Pacilly for creating the environment for remote participation of subjects through the internet. Address for correspondence: Johanneke Caspers, Phonetics Laboratory/Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics, Leiden University, PO Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands; e-mail: <caspers@rullet.leidenuniv .nl> Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns
see for example Bolinger (1986, 1989); Cruttenden (1986); Cutler, Dahan, and van Donselaar (1997); Ladd (1996); and Tench (1996). The present investigation is concerned with functional differences among accent-lending melodic configurations; it is an attempt to experimentally verify abstract linguistic proposals concerning the meaning of four pitch accent types in Dutch. Two important semantic notions that have been associated with intonation are prominence and phrasing (among others, Bolinger, 1975; Cutler, 1991; Ladd, 1992; Tench, 1996): speakers use melodic means to direct the listener s attention to the semantically central aspects of the message (prominence) and to aid the listener in segmenting the speech stream at several linguistic levels (phrasing). For the signaling of semantically central or focused constituents, pitch accents are exploited, and the location of boundaries may be indicated by specific boundary- marking pitch configurations. It is fairly commonly acknowledged that speech melody carries another semantic aspect in addition to the signaling of prominence and phrasing: the signaling of information status with respect to the discourse (e.g., Gussenhoven, 1984; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990; Tench, 1996). For example, all accent-lending pitch configurations carry the meaning of prominence ( this is important information ), but the type of pitch accent adds a further meaning component, intention (cf. Grosz & Sidner, 1986; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990), which pertains to the status of the focused information with respect to a background shared between speaker and listener (e.g., a H* pitch accent signals that the focused information should be treated as new in the discourse, cf. Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990). It is this additional meaning aspect that is under investigation here, which means that the present research is about intention rather than attention (focus). Note that the meaning differences between the various pitch accent types are expected to be extremely subtle, not only because they share the prominence meaning aspect, but also because it is quite clear from the experimental literature that even under contextually constrained circumstances there are large within -speaker and between - speaker differences in the choice of intonation contour (e.g., Caspers, 1994; Kraayeveld, 1997). Apparently, associations between specific pitch accent types and certain communicative circumstances are relatively loose. Therefore, the effects of pitch accent type in experimental investigations are expected to be moderate. The limited number of available experimental investigations of the meaning of melodic shapes employ semantic scales as experimental tools, looking for systematic differences in the interpretation of utterances, depending on intonational distinctions (e.g., Grabe, Gussenhoven, Haan, Marsi, & Post, 1998; Kirsner & Van Heuven, 1996; Kirsner, Van Heuven, & Van Bezooijen, 1994; Sanders, 1996; Uldall, 1972). Most of these studies investigate emotions and attitudes associated directly with certain melodic shapes. These emotions and attitudes the things that semantic scales represent can be viewed as interpretations of an underlying abstract meaning in a specific context (e.g., Cruttenden, 1986; Gussenhoven, 1984; Ladd, 1980; Ladd, Scherer, & Silverman, 1986; Liberman, 1979; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990). However, the available investigations do not present a comprehensive account of how the semantic scales are to be related to more abstract intrinsic meanings. Instead of attempting to capture abstract meanings in sets of semantic scales, the present investigation tries to translate abstract meaning proposals into different types of background. The semantic proposals adopted concern information status of focused Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on the October 31, 2009
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constituents, and an attempt is made to create situational contexts which define (part of) the background shared between speaker and listener, creating a certain setting which should be more or less appropriate for the pitch accent types under investigation. Contexts and short utterances carrying the various pitch accent types were presented to listeners, who had to indicate the best match between context and contour. This way, a number of factors that may be relevant to the interpretation of pitch accent types is controlled, but many factors remain unknown and therefore uncontrolled and these factors will introduce noise into the data. However, it is expected that the basic semantic regularities will surface through this (inevitable) noise.
Choice of intonation model
There are several different intonation models available, and a choice has to be made for a specific model when investigating melodic phenomena, because the large variability in natural intonation contours has to be structured in some way. However, this choice is not without consequences, since the model dictates which melodic differences are to be regarded as linguistic and which as paralinguistic (i.e., which aspects form the basic parts of the model, and which are mere variations in realization, cf. Ladd, 1996). There are two well- known models of Dutch intonation: the phonetically oriented model developed at the Institute for Perception Research (IPO) in Eindhoven ( The Grammar of Dutch Intonation or GDI, cf. t Hart & Collier, 1975; t Hart, Collier & Cohen, 1990), and the more abstract, phonologically inspired autosegmental model formulated by Gussenhoven (1988). There seems to be some controversy about the magnitude of the differences between the GDI and Gussenhoven s model (cf. Collier, 1989; Gussenhoven, 1988; Ladd, 1983, 1996), but they do differ with respect to the definition of the basic melodic shapes, and therefore it is of some relevance that the GDI is taken as point of departure in the present investigation. The GDI is based on the concept that intonation can be described in terms of sequences of discrete pitch movements corresponding to voluntary actions on the part of the speaker. Within this framework there is a direct relationship between accent and intonation: certain pitch movements cause the syllable within which they are positioned to become accented, whereas the autosegmental approach works with the notion of association between a morphological level at which tones are represented and a separate phonetic level at which accents are represented. Furthermore, the GDI regards pitch movements (not pitch levels) as the basic building blocks. Ten pitch movements are distinguished: five rises (1 5) and five falls (A E), defined by perceptual features along four dimensions: direction, timing with regard to the segmental structure, rate of change, and size. The grammar defines the combinations of pitch movements that are possible, which result in a limited number of pitch configurations containing one or two pitch accents, or a boundary marker ( t Hart et al., 1990). For example, a fast early full rise (1), directly followed by a fast late full fall (A) produces the so-called pointed hat contour (1&A), the most common accentlending pitch configuration in Dutch. However, the grammar does not indicate how to choose from the various types of melodic configurations, which means that there is no semantic component other than the distinction between accent- lending and boundary- marking configurations, and therefore ideas about meaning differences between Dutch pitch accent types have to be sought elsewhere. Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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Analyses of the meaning of Dutch intonation
There are two theoretical analyses of the meaning of Dutch melodic shapes that are formulated in terms of the manipulation of the information status of focused constituents: the structuralist analysis by Keijsper (1984) and the autosegmental analysis by Gussenhoven (1984). The latter analysis was developed for English, but since the intonation of Dutch can be described in terms of the same phonological and morphological units as that of English (cf. Gussenhoven, 1988, p. 96), this semantic analysis can be applied to Dutch data as well. The analysis presented by Keijsper in which there is a direct link between form and meaning is based on the GDI and consists of eight meaningful melodic shapes ( type I type VIII), in which levels as well as movements are relevant. Three of the configurations are involved in the marking of boundaries (types VI, VII, and VIII) and are therefore not relevant here. The remaining five configurations have the meaning of accent ( the speaker communicates what he is and is not thinking about), and the type of accent reveals whether or not what he thinks of exists (Keijsper, 1984, p. 31). For example: a type II pitch accent indicates that the speaker thinks of the focused information; at the same time the next thought is announced, and this next thought is necessary for deciding whether the focused information exists or not. A type III pitch accent, on the other hand, indicates that the speaker knew that the focused information existed before the moment of speaking. Gussenhoven (1984) distinguishes three tonal morphemes or basic tones, described as sequences of high (H) and low (L) tone segments: H*L (the fall), H*LH (the fall- rise) and L*H (the rise). One of these tones has to be chosen at every accented position in the segmental structure (asterisks specify the tonal segment that is to be associated with the accented syllable on the segmental tier). [P]art of what intonation is used for is to mark the status of the information conveyed by the sentence with respect to a background (starting point) hypothesized by the speaker (Gussenhoven, 1984, p. 200). Each tone morpheme manipulates the background in a different way, that is, represents a different meaning. For example: a H*L tone marks information as new, whereas a L*H tone leaves open whether the information is new or not. All other melodic shapes are derived from these three basic tonal elements by rules and modifications, which add their own semantic features to the meaning of the basic tones. Gussenhoven further distinguishes different types of orientation of the tone morphemes. In the default orientation the speaker refers directly to the referent of the focused information, whereas he may also refer to some aspect of the speech situation (1984, p. 205). For example, a speaker can utter a proper name to point to a specific person I think Marina is the best candidate an example of a default orientation, but he may also utter the name to open a conversation Marina, can you spare a moment? which is an example of what will be called a vocative orientation. 1 In the present investigation, addressing a person (vocative orientation) is contrasted with the default orientation because
1 Gussenhovens original and potentially confusing term literal orientation is replaced by
default orientation; the vocative orientation is the first type of what Gussenhoven calls metaphorical orientation p. 205). by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009 Downloaded(1984, from http://las.sagepub.com
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Figure 1 Stylized examples of the four pitch accent types on the proper name Marina.
preliminary investigations indicated that there may be differences in suitability of pitch accent types, depending on the orientation chosen. For instance, it was difficult to picture situations where accent 1&A could be used to address a person, whereas it was easy to picture a default orientation for 1&A.
MEANING HYPOTHESES FOR FOUR DUTCH PITCH ACCENT TYPES
Melodic shapes
Four melodic shapes were chosen for experimental investigation, each containing one pitch accent (which means that all pitch accents are utterance final): (1) (2) (3) (4) an accent-lending an accent-lending an accent-lending an accent-lending rise (followed by a boundary-marking rise) fall rise and fall on one syllable, and rise and a half fall on one syllable.
In Figure 1 the four shapes are illustrated, superimposed on a three-syllable word with an accented middle syllable (capitalized). The letters and numbers correspond to the perceptually relevant pitch movements distinguished in the GDI. The GDI symbols represent: low 0 and high 0 / declination, accent -lending rise 1 (steep, early in the syllable), accent-lending fall A (steep, late in the syllable), accentlending Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009 half fall E (steep, not
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reaching the low declination line), and & indicates that movements are combined on one syllable. The accent-lending rise 1 and the accent-lending fall A are the most frequently used pitch movements in Dutch; they form the basic elements of the so- called hat pattern contours ( t Hart et al., 1990). The combination of the rise and fall on one syllable, 1&A or pointed hat, is the standard pitch accent in Dutch, and a sequence of rise 1 and fall A on separate syllables forms the so -called flat hat contour, a very common contour with two accented syllables. Since the present investigation works with one-accent contours, the flat hat is not included in the design, but the parts it is built of are. As a fourth contour 1&E is added: an accent-lending rise and half fall combined on one syllable. The inventory of target shapes should at least be plausible to adherents of (Keijsper, 1984, and) the GDI, while it may appear less likely to adherents of competing models (see also Table 1). The single accent- lending rise (1) is followed by a boundary- marking rise on the final syllable (GDI notation: 2) because a single accent -lending rise without such a final rise seems unsuitable as a (turn) final contour. Selting (1996) presents empirical evidence for a melodic turn -keeping cue in German, namely a contour ending in a level pitch accent; furthermore, Caspers (1998) presents experimental evidence that the accent/ ) cannot readily be interpreted as lending rise followed by level sustained pitch (10 turn - final in Dutch. Since the experimental set- up requires that all contours are complete, rise 2 was added to the incomplete rise 1 as default marker of finality.
Hypothetical meanings suggested by Keijsper and Gussenhoven
Keijsper s semantic analyses of the four shapes are presented in Table 1. An approximation of the meanings of the four shapes in terms of Gussenhovens model is given also (for some GDI shapes there is no straightforward translation into Gussenhovens melodic shapes; see also Caspers, 1998). The GDI notation (leaving out the symbols representing high and low declination), as well as the notations used by Keijsper and Gussenhoven are in bold face. Only the intentional side of both analyses is presented (i.e., the attentional meaning this is important information is taken for granted). According to Keijsper the accent-lending rise (1) signifies that the speaker thinks of a certain referent (viz., the one that is focused by placing the pitch accent), but that the following thought will give more information about the existence of that referent. The precise meaning of the final rise 2 (type VII) is not clear, but it implies a boundary. In Gussenhovens terminology the accent-lending rise (L*H) communicates that the speaker is not sure whether the focused information is part of the knowledge shared between speaker and listener, which seems analogous to Keijsper s definition of the meaning of 1. In more recent versions of Gussenhoven s model (Gussenhoven, 1991; Van den Berg, Gussenhoven, & Rietveld, 1992) L*H is by default followed by a high boundary tone (H%) as marker of finality. This can be taken as theoretical support for the addition of the final rise 2 to 1 in the present investigation. In Keijsper s model the use of the accent-lending fall (A) indicates that the speaker takes for granted that the referent exists; this means that the focused information is presented as given . In contrast, 1&A introduces the existence of the referent, that is, adds a new s Ciutacu thought. 1&A equals H*Lfrom inhttp://las.sagepub.com Gussenhoven model, with the abstract meaning of Downloaded by Sorin on October 31, 2009
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TABLE 1
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Semantic analyses of the four accent-lending pitch configurations, as formulated by Keijsper (1984) and Gussenhoven (1984)
Notation and Meaning

GDI notation 12 Keijsper (1984) Gussenhoven (1984) Agreement?
type II plus type VII the existence of the referent is not communicated and the next thought is announced (may be interpreted as a question) plus a boundary type III the existence of the referent was projected before the moment of speaking (i.e., speaker introduces a known referent) type I in final position the referent exists (i.e., speaker realizes this at the moment of speaking, suitable when the referent is new) type V the referent exists plus the information contained in this accent is really superfluous (modification of type I)
L*H H% TESTING: I choose not to commit myself as to whether this Variable is background (may mean: I ask you if this is background) plus finality %H! H*L ADDITION: I add this Variable to the background (may mean: I tell you this is background) plus the meaning of a high onset (%H) plus the meaning of downstep (!) H*L ADDITION: I add this Variable to the background (may mean: I tell you this is background) H*L plus stylization ADDITION: I add this Variable to the background (may mean: I tell you this is background) plus This is a matter of everyday occurrence/routine
yes
no
1&A
yes
1&E
yes
ADDITION, which parallels Keijsper s definition of the meaning of 1&A. The accentlending fall (A), however, poses a problem in Gussenhoven s analysis, because an initial stretch of high declination, followed by an early fall in the accented syllable, followed by low declination in the final syllable (cf. Figure 1, shape 2) cannot easily be described in his framework. A can only be accurately represented as part of a downstepped contour (cf. Gussenhoven, 1991, p. 149; Rietveld & Gussenhoven, 1995, pp. 376 77): !H*L. This means that the meaning of a high onset as well as the meaning of downstep not given in Gussenhoven (1984) should be added to the meaning of H*L (i.e., ADDITION).2 Finally, the meanings of 1&E given by Gussenhoven (inspired by Ladd, 1978) and
2 Grabe et al. (1998) show that a high onset combined with a high pitch accent (e.g., %H H*L) is
judged as less favorable than the combination of a low onset with a high pitch accent (e.g., %L H*L): less friendly, less polite, more irritated, and more aloof. According to Ladd (1996) downstep adds a nuance like finality or completeness (p. 76), which is confirmed by recent experimental results (Caspers, Downloaded from 1999). http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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Keijsper are basically the same. Note that 1&E is a special case in both analyses, namely a modification of the prototypical rise-fall accent 1&A. Contour 1&E can be described as a calling contour (cf., for example, Gibbon, 1976; Gussenhoven, 1993; Ladd, 1978, 1996), but as observed by Gibbon (1976) and Ladd (1978) it does not have to be used to call someone, and calls do not have to have this contour. Both authors essentially agree on the meaning of three of the four shapes: 1, 1&A, and 1&E. However, they do not agree on the meaning of the single accent-lending fall (A). According to Gussenhoven this shape has the same basic meaning as 1&A, namely, introducing a new variable (plus the meaning of a high onset and downstep), whereas Keijsper sees the single fall as indicating givenness . Acceptability ratings of sentences containing explicitly new information (e.g., Mijn huis staat in brand, My house is on fire , an example from Keijsper, 1984, p. 28) with contours 1&A or A reveal that the former combination is acceptable, while the latter is unacceptable (Caspers, Van Heuven, & Van Zwol, 1998). Therefore, Keijsper s meaning hypothesis for A is adopted.
Form-meaning hypotheses
In this subsection a meaning hypothesis for each of the four types of accent-lending pitch configuration is presented, adopting the terminology used by Gussenhoven (1984). Speaker (S) and hearer (H) share a background, that is, they have some idea of what they both know and what they do not know at the moment of speaking, on the basis of explicit and implicit information. S may manipulate the shared background by putting a Variable (V) into focus. The abstract manipulations TESTING and ADDITION are used as in Gussenhoven s model. For the background manipulation involving given information, Gussenhovens notion of SELECTION is borrowed.3 Examples are inspired by Gussenhoven (1984). (1) (2) (3) (4) 12 = testing: S leaves it up to H to determine whether V belongs to the background or not (is V part of the background?); for example, It s a UNicorn? A = selection: S selects a V from the background (which means that V was present in the background at the moment of speaking); for example, Yes, its a UNicorn 1&A = addition: S adds a V to the background (which means that V was not present in the background at the moment of speaking); for example, See? It s a UNicorn! 1&E = addition plus it was predictable: V is added to the background, but that is a matter of everyday routine; for example, I repeat: it s a UNicorn
EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH
The goal of the present investigation is to test the relevance of the formmeaning - relationships presented above in an experimental setting. It is notoriously difficult to test the contribution of intonation to the meaning of an utterance: [] our own melodic approach
3 In Gussenhovens model, the meaning SELECTION is attached to tone H*LH. His notions
s (1975) ADDITION and SELECTION correspond withby Brazil proclaiming and referring tones. Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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to intonation has produced an inventory of basic intonation patterns in Dutch and English, but we still cannot answer the question how a speaker makes a selection among these basic alternatives []. We speculate that these choices are influenced by the attitudinal meaning that a speaker wants to add to the literal meaning of his utterances. But the actual encoding of this attitudinal meaning into an individual pitch contour is evidently governed by so many pragmatic and situational factors that we are still looking for a manageable experimental paradigm in which to tackle this complicated issue ( t Hart et al., 1990, p. 114). According to some people it is even impossible: [] even the non- specific, non- referential effects exercised by intonation contours can be shown to be context- dependent to such a degree that the attempt to extract from them an element of commonality valid in all contexts must be reckoned a futile endeavor (Cutler, 1977, p. 106). Others believe that intonation does make an independent and (experimentally) verifiable contribution to utterance interpretation, which resulted in a number of concrete proposals regarding intonational function (among others: Bolinger, 1986, 1989; Brazil, Coulthard, & Johns, 1980; Cruttenden, 1986; Gussenhoven, 1984; Kowtko, 1996; Ladd, 1980; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990; Pierrehumbert & Steele, 1989; Ward & Hirschberg, 1985, all for English; Keijsper, 1984 for Dutch; Grice, 1995 for Palermo Italian). Furthermore, there are experimental investigations of intonational function (some recent examples are: Caspers & Van Heuven, 1995; Grabe, Gussenhoven, Haan, Marsi, & Post, 1998; Gussenhoven & Rietveld, 1991, 1997; Haan, Van Heuven, Pacilly, & Van Bezooijen, 1997a,b; Kirsner & Van Heuven, 1996; Kirsner, Van Heuven, & Van Bezooijen, 1994; Kohler, 1991; Sanders, 1996; Terken, 1993). In the majority of these cases the experimental design involved isolated utterances which had to be judged on some sort of (semantic) scale. The present investigation attempts to verify the abstract meaning hypotheses by presenting listeners with target utterances carrying different melodic shapes in specific contexts, asking for appropriateness judgments. The situational contexts are supposed to reflect the abstract meanings hypothesized for the various pitch accent types, by defining (part of) the background shared between speaker and listener, creating a specific setting for the manipulation of this background that will be signaled by the type of pitch accent realized on the target utterance. Formal semantics does not offer a useful framework for attacking the problem of how to create these contexts, since it is recognized that the contribution of intonation to utterance interpretation is hardly ever propositional and thus cannot readily be expressed in truth - conditional terms (Ladd, 1996; Ward & Hirschberg, 1985). Therefore, the contexts had to be constructed on the (not very explicit) basis of the information status of a referent with respect to a background. In addition to the four types of background manipulations presented in the previous section, the experimental design incorporated two types of orientation of the manipulation ( default vs. vocative), which means that eight different types of context had to be created. Proper names were chosen as target utterances, since these make a default as well as a vocative orientation possible. The proper names, two male ( Cornelis and Jan Willem) and two female ones ( Jolanda and Marina), consist mainly of voiced segments to guarantee an optimally audible F0 contour, and have three syllables, of which the middle one is stressed. Table 2 contains a summary of the background characteristics that were to be captured in the eight basic context categories. Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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TABLE 2 Relevant aspects of the background for the four types of intentional meaning, broken down by orientation (default vs. vocative)
Orientation
Intentional meaning (1) testing (2) selection (3) addition (4) addition plus Default presence of person X in the background is unclear person X is present in the background person X is not present in the background person X is not present in the background, but is predictable Vocative no communicative situation with H, unclear whether addressing H is relevant communicative situation with H is part of the background no communicative situation with H, addressing is new no communicative situation with H, addressing is predictable
According to Keijsper and Gussenhoven the manipulation testing expresses indecision about the presence of the focused information in the background; when the focused information is a person (default orientation), the background must incorporate this uncertainty, so that testing becomes a relevant manipulation (Is person X present in the background? ). When the orientation is vocative, the relevance of addressing person X is tested, which means that the description of the background must make clear that it is uncertain whether addressing X is relevant or not. The manipulation selection involves selecting a person from the background shared between speaker and listener; in the default orientation this person should therefore be part of the background, whereas in the vocative orientation the addressing of this person should be part of the background. In contrast, the manipulation addition presupposes the absence of person X from the background in the default orientation, and the absence of addressing this person in the vocative orientation. Finally, the manipulation addition plus requires the same background descriptions as for addition, but with the connotation that either the presence or the addressing of person X is predictable. For each of the eight context types, three different situational descriptions were created. The resulting 24 contexts are presented in Appendix 1. All contexts are situated in a school and the speaker (S) is the teacher. Four examples are presented here, translated into English: (a) You want to speak to a colleague about something important; this colleague, however, is in the staff room talking to others. You join them and try: Marina.
In context (a) it is not clear whether it is possible to address Marina (vocative orientation), and the speaker is expected to express this by using contour 12, testing the relevance of his initiation. (b) On the agenda are a number of classroom presentations; after a few introductory remarks about the first subject you address the pupil concerned: Marina.
The addressing of the pupil (vocative orientation) is present in the background, since everybody knows that Downloaded Marinafrom will be giving by a Sorin presentation, the prediction for context http://las.sagepub.com Ciutacu on Octoberso 31, 2009
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(b) is that contour A, selection, will be the most appropriate melodic shape. (c) You are in a meeting with colleagues about the problem of ongoing thefts from the cafeteria cash register. A number of aspects of the thefts are being discussed and suddenly everything is clear to you; it has to be her: Marina.
In context (c) the speaker is referring to a person when uttering the proper name (default orientation). This person is considered not to be present in the shared background (speaker and hearers were not thinking of Marina before the moment of speaking), which leads to the prediction that contour 1&A, with the abstract meaning of addition, will be the best fitting melodic shape in this context. (d) A colleague has just asked you which pupil was absent that morning; you mentioned the name Marina, but your colleague apparently has not listened well and asks: Who? You reply, somewhat annoyed: Marina.
Apparently, the pupil referred to is not present in the shared background, whereas the speaker thinks it should be, and expresses this by using contour 1&E: I add this information to your background, but it was to be expected. There are some difficulties with this particular way of structuring the background, with the purpose of creating a setting which is suitable for one abstract manipulation only. In principle, a speaker is free to present focused information as for example, new or given, irrespective of the precise situational context. A closely related problem is the fact that the notion shared background cannot be defined in exact terms, which means that the interpretation of what is shared background and what is not may differ from person to person. For example, it can be argued that in example (c) Marina is given instead of new information, because the names of all pupils are always present in the minds of the teachers. Undoubtedly there are more contextual aspects which may influence the responses of the subjects in an unpredictable way, which means that every context will probably allow more than one, or maybe even all four contours. To have some independent evidence for the association between context type and abstract intentional meaning, a paper-and - pencil experiment was carried out. The purpose of this experiment was to obtain a rough check of the relationship between the abstract semantic notions of testing, selection, addition, and addition plus predictability and the four groups of short texts.
Paper-and-pencil experiment
A short description of the four abstract meaning categories, as well as the 24 contexts constructed, were presented on paper to a number of professional linguists, who were requested to identify the abstract meaning best fitting each context (with forced choice from the four alternative meanings). A positive association between predicted and responded meaning categories was expected. Method. Because of the abstract nature of the metalinguistic task to be performed, only professional linguists participated in the paper-and -pencil experiment. They were presented with a short written explanation of the theory presented above (including Table 2). Subjects were then instructed to identify with the speaker to choose the abstract meaning category Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by and Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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Figure 2 Paper-and-pencil experiment: Percentage of responded abstract meaning category (collapsed across orientations), broken down by intentional meaning expressed by context; chance = 25% (shaded).
which reflects best what the speaker does by pronouncing the proper name in this particular situation. Note that the experiment was entirely mental, that is, no speech was recorded or presented. Subjects were asked to indicate the orientation as well (addressing someone vs. speaking about someone), which means that they had to decide for each context which cell of Table 2 was being exemplif ied. Twenty- nine linguists, all native speakers of Dutch, and not familiar with the meaning analyses of Keijsper and Gussenhoven (other than what they had just learned from the instructions) participated in the experiment. The contexts were presented in a single fixed quasi - random order. Results. Results are presented in bar charts, using ANOVA as the statistical analysis technique (in all analyses the significance level was set at .05). The data from four of the 29 subjects were excluded from the analysis, because they made two or more mistakes in the indication of the orientation, which was taken as a sign that the task was not completely understood, or was performed rather loosely (of the remaining 25 subjects four made one mistake in indicating the orientation ). The results of the experiment are presented in Figure 2 (confusion matrices frequency counts can be found Downloadedwith from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009 in Appendix 2).
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For each of the four intentional meaning categories the relative frequency of responses in the four abstract meaning categories is given. In 60% of the total number of cases the predicted meaning category was chosen. In all categories the number of correct responses is at least two times above chance ( = 25%). An analysis of variance was carried out on the number of correct responses per subject, involving two crossed within - subject factors: meaning expressed by context (four levels) and orientation (two levels). There is no statistical difference in number of correct responses between the four types of meaning, F(3,72)= 1.14, p = .340, n.s., Huynh -Feldt Epsilon = 1.00. In each of the meaning categories the average number of correct responses is a little higher for the default orientation than for the vocative orientation ( F(1,24)= 7.00, p = .014; cf. Appendix 2), but there is no significant interaction between meaning and orientation ( F(3,72)= 1.69, p = .176, n.s., Huynh -Feldt Epsilon = .86). A possible explanation for the fact that the type of orientation influences the number of correct responses can be found in the abstractness of the task performed. It is probably quite normal for a linguist to think in terms of the presence or absence of X in a background shared between S and H, but in the vocative orientation subjects had to think in terms of manipulations of the background referring to the initiation of a conversation, which is unusual and somewhat more complicated. Conclusion. A number of subjects complained about the difficulty of the task; some of them explicitly mentioned problems with identifying the background (what is shared information, what information is not shared, which part of the background is relevant). Still, the data present a reasonably clear picture, which is taken as evidence that the four context types do reflect the abstract meaning they were designed to convey. When the results are broken down by individual contexts, however (cf. Appendix 3), it becomes clear that some contexts were more suitable than others: contexts D4a, V2a, V2c, and V4c elicited the intended abstract meaning category from less than half of the subjects (note that three of these problematic contexts have a vocative orientation). Since there was no obvious way to improve the intention of these contexts they were in agreement with the abstract hypotheses it was decided to maintain all 24 contexts in the perception experiment. 4
PERCEPTION EXPERIMENT 1
The 24 contexts used in the paper-and - pencil experiment were presented again in a perception experiment. Both naive and linguistically sophisticated subjects were asked to project themselves into the speaker role in each situation, and to rank the four different melodic versions of the target utterance from best to worst fit in their particular context. A positive association between the contour type corresponding to the meaning captured in a specific context and the judged appropriateness of that contour type was expected.
4 Also, a different design for the paper-and-pencil experiment did not lead to other results: when
the task was made less abstract, as suggested by an anonymous referee (for instance by presenting a context and asking whether this person is new information for the hearer, instead of asking the subject to select one of the four abstract notions that were introduced earlier), the results are very close to that of the original paper-and-pencil experiment (this was established in a number of pilot tests, whichDownloaded are not from reported upon in this paper). http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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Method
Stimulus material. A female and a male Dutch intonologist read aloud the 24 contexts. They also realized the four proper names with the four intonation contours; the resulting 32 melodic contours are presented in Appendix 4. For each presentation of a context plus target utterances, the speaker of the former was not the same as the speaker of the latter, that is, when the context was produced by the female speaker, the corresponding four versions of the proper name were produced by the male speaker, and vice versa. To enlarge the number of data, each context was presented twice to the subjects, each time with a different speaker and with a different accompanying proper name. There were four different combinations of contexts and proper names available, and these were blocked over subjects. The order of the contexts and the order of presentation of the four contours was varied over subjects to obviate possible biases and counterbalance fatigue effects. For each individual subject, however, the presentation order of the four different F0 contours was fixed throughout the experiment (i.e., for every context the four different contours were presented in the same order). Subjects. Sixty- four native Dutch subjects participated in the experiment (27 males and 37 females). Their ages varied between 21 and 55; no hearing difficulties were reported. Nine of the subjects were linguistically naive whilst the rest were students and professionals 30 phoneticians and 25 linguists. Of the 29 subjects who participated in the earlier paperand - pencil experiment, 23 participated in the perception experiment as well (the results in the paper-and -pencil experiment of three of these were rejected, which means that there are data for both experiments from 20 subjects). Procedure. The experiment was organized such that it could be presented via the internet. 5 The majority of the subjects participated via the internet, in response to an appeal issued by e-mail. The rest did the experiment in the Leiden phonetics laboratory. The experiment started with an extensive introduction, in which the subject s task was explained, urging the reader to perform the experiment with utmost concentration, because of the subtlety of the differences between the various contexts. Subjects were instructed to assign each of the four target utterances a different rank ( 1 for best fit to 4 for worst fit; forced choice, no ties allowed). The contexts were presented one by one, switching to the next context only when all four versions of the proper name were uniquely rated. The program reported any mistake to the subjects, obliging them to adjust their scores (e.g., when two target utterances received the same number). The situations were presented as text on the screen, and subjects could summon the read - out version of the text as often as they felt necessary. Four icons were displayed below the text, and clicking such an icon resulted in the auditory presentation of one of the four melodic versions of the proper name. Four response buttons were presented next to each icon, numbered from 1 to 4. Clicking such a button resulted in a change in color,
5 The experiment can be accessed at http:// fonetiek-6.leidenuniv .nl/caspers/le-intro.html>. The <
presentation was programmed by Jos J.A. Pacilly of the Leiden University Phonetics Laboratory, and runs on any Silicon Graphics Indy/ Indigo workstation. Audio file conversion is necessary when the experiment is to be run on other computers. Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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Figure 3 Perception Experiment 1: Percentage of correct responses for the two types of orientation, broken down by intentional meaning expressed by context; chance= 25% (shaded).
indicating that that particular melodic version was assigned that particular rank. Subjects could correct their rankings by clicking on another button. The experiment started with one practice - situation, and when this first screen was correctly completed, the subject was asked a number of questions regarding age, occupation/ field of study, sex, native language, and hearing problems, after which the experiment began. Generally, subjects needed between 30 and 60 mins to complete the task. Since a large number of subjects participated via the Internet, there was no strict control over the circumstances under which the experiment was performed (such as environmental noise, type of headphones, type of loudspeaker, etc.).
Results
The results are presented in bar charts, using ANOVA as the statistical test. Due to problems with the network connection, a small number of cases (18 of the 3072) are missing from the dataset. Confusion matrices are presented in Appendix 2. Figure 3 presents for each context type the percentage responses favoring the contour type predicted by the semantic analysis (further referred as correct responses), broken Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu onto October 31, 2009
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Figure 4 Perception Experiment 1: Percentage of preferred contour type in the default orientation, broken down by intentional meaning expressed by context; predicted contour type indicated by arrow; chance= 25% (shaded).
down by the two types of orientation. In 55% of the total number of cases the predicted contour type was selected as the most appropriate one. An analysis of variance involving two crossed within - subject factors ( meaning expressed by context and orientation) reveals that there is an effect of meaning ( F (3,189)= 109.49, p < .001, Huynh - Feldt Epsilon = .95), no main effect of orientation (F (1,63)= 1.86, p =.177, n.s.), and interaction between the factors meaning and orientation ( F (3,189)= 130.22, p < .001, HuynhFeldt Epsilon = .98). This means that the percentages of correct responses depend on the intentional meaning category (there are more correct responses in the testing category than in, for instance, the addition plus category) and on the combination of meaning category and the type of orientation (the testing contexts work very well in both orientations, whereas the other three meaning categories receive a large number of correct responses in one orientation, but not in the other). In Figures 4 and 5 the relative frequency is given of the contour types judged as most appropriate (i.e., ranked as number one), broken down by the four categories of meaning, separately for both types of orientation. Figure 4 reveals that in the default orientation contour 1&A is preferred in all context types, except Downloaded the testing category. the vocative (Figure 5) the from http://las.sagepub.com by In Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, orientation 2009
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Figure 5 Perception Experiment 1: Percentage of preferred contour type in the vocative orientation, broken down by intentional meaning expressed by context; predicted contour type indicated by arrow; chance= 25% (shaded).
responses in the testing, selection, and addition plus contexts are as predicted, whereas the preferences in the addition contexts are randomly dispersed over the four contour types. Post hoc analyses reveal no significant effects of background of the subjects (t (1630)= 0.86, p = .390 for naive vs. linguistically trained subjects; t (1870)= 0.12, p = .906 for naive vs. phonetically trained subjects; and t (2638)= 1.40, p = .162 for phonetically vs. linguistically trained subjects), participation in the paper-and -pencil test, t (3070)= 1.62, p = .106, or speaker of the stimulus utterances, t (3070)= 1.12, p = .261. Excluding those contexts that did not perform as expected in the paper-and - pencil experiment does not substantially influence the results of the perception experiment (cf. Appendix 5). The reason for this is not entirely clear, but see the next subsection for further discussion.
Conclusion and Discussion
In contrast with the paper-and - pencil experiment subjects reported that they enjoyed the test. This may be due to the more everyday-like situation in the perception experiment, which resembles a normal speech situation more closely than the genuinely abstract task that had to be performed in the from paperand -pencil experiment. There Downloaded http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009 was no effect of subject
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background (naive, phonetically trained, or linguistically trained) on the number of correct responses, which means that for all subjects the task was equally difficult. Furthermore, there was no effect of earlier participation in the paper-and - pencil test, indicating that familiarity with the situational contexts did not facilitate the task to be performed. For five out of the eight types of contexts there is a positive association with the corresponding contour type. However, in the default orientation the selection, addition, and addition plus contexts all elicited 1&A as the most appropriate contour, indicating that contour types A and 1&E are not particularly acceptable in their specific contexts. Nevertheless, the largest number of preferences for contour type A can be found in the selection contexts and there are (virtually) no preferences for contour types 12 and 1&E. Furthermore, the only context type resulting in preference judgments for contour type 1&E is addition plus. These findings indicate that under the noise, that is, the preference for contour 1&A, there is some support for the hypotheses. In the vocative orientation the context types behave as predicted, except for the addition contexts: responses are scattered over the four contour types, which means that the vocative addition contexts do not discriminate between the four types of accent-lending contours. There are a number of possible explanations for the unpredicted effects. Firstly, the realization of the contours may be incorrect, that is, one or more contours resemble other contours too closely. This possibility was checked in a small post- hoc experiment. A single trained Dutch phonetician who was not aware of the purpose of the materials transcribed the auditorily presented target utterances twice in the GDI notation, also judging the acceptability of the melodic realization of each contour on a ten point scale. All 32 target utterances were judged to be good realizations of the intended accent types, except for one 1&A contour, which was twice transcribed as 1&A2, a pointed hat followed by a small final rise. This contour did not lead to deviating results, however. Furthermore, all contours that were intended to contain a single accent -lending fall were transcribed as 5A0 by the judge, indicating that a small rise was perceived on the initial (unaccented) syllable. However, since the A-contours do not have the characteristics of 5&A (which can be taken as a variant of 1&A, cf. Keijsper, 1985, p. 183; Vismans, 1994, p. 176) inspection of the data confirms that the A-contours indeed contain an early fall, not a late fall (cf. Appendix 4) it is concluded that the melodic realization of the target utterances is satisfactory. A number of intertwined aspects remain as possible explanations for the unpredicted findings: the abstract meaning hypotheses themselves may not be correct, the contexts may be inadequate, and there may be pragmatic problems. In the default orientation all contexts, except the testing ones, lead to a preference for contour 1&A, the default accent (preferred in approximately 50% of the total number of cases, cf. Appendix 2, Table C). On the assumption that this accent type is the most neutral means of assigning prominence (cf. Keijsper, 1984), it would constitute a convenient escape hatch in case of doubt on the part of the listener. This offers an explanation for the choice for contour 1&A, but not for the fact that the contour types A and 1&E are shunned even where predicted. The contexts designed to evoke contour A (selection) bear an element of foreknowledge: the pupil spoken is present by in the background (cf. Appendix 1: D2a-c). Downloadedabout from http://las.sagepub.com Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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By pronouncing the pupil s name, the speaker thus focuses on an element which is given information. However, the fact that it is this pupil and not another one may be viewed as new information (i.e., the target utterance may be interpreted as elliptic), which means that the speaker is free to present the proper name as either new or given. It may then be the case that using contour A, that is, implying that the focused information is not new, is felt to be a trifle impolite. The fact that the predicted A contour is judged as second best supports this assumption: when both the first and second preference are taken into account, the number of correct responses rises from 31% to 94% (cf. Appendix 3).6 The default addition plus contexts did not evoke contour type 1&E as the most appropriate, which may be a result of the fact that it was assumed that 1&E expresses an aspect of predictability , based on Gussenhovens analysis. Keijsper, however, chooses a stronger wording: the information is really superfluous (cf. Table 1). It may be the case that this is the better meaning analysis and that the contexts do not sufficiently express this superfluousness, causing the subjects to divert to other contours, because choosing the 1&E contour would be impolite (since it exposes the speaker s feeling that what he says is superfluous, i.e., suggesting that the listener is stupid). This assumption is supported by the fact that the one context containing the term annoyed performed far better than the other two (cf. context D4a, Appendices 1 and 3). The same pattern is present in the vocative orientation (where the addition plus contexts generally performed rather well, which may be explained by the fact that mainly pupils are addressed there, whereas in the default orientation colleagues are spoken to): here the results are also better for the contexts expressing annoyance (V4a and c). This means that the abstract meaning of the 1&E contour and, subsequently, each relevant context has to be revised. The overly general (i.e., predictable rather than superfluous) meaning of 1&E may explain the fact that excluding those contexts from the dataset that did not lead to the predicted responses in the paper-and - pencil experiment, did not substantially influence the results of the perception experiment. The addition -plus -predictability definition used in the paper test made it plausible for subjects to choose this abstract meaning category in some of the cases where selection was intended (i.e., V2a and c), whereas 1&E was not suitable for these contexts in the perception experiment; furthermore, the stronger addition plus - predictability contexts did not lead to the predicted responses in the paper test, but they performed as expected in the perception test, whereas the weaker addition - plus predictability contexts led to the predicted responses in the paper test but not in the perception experiment. In the vocative orientation the results are more in line with the predictions, except for the addition category. Surprisingly, the pointed hat contour (1&A) is preferred in only 12% of the total number of vocatively oriented contexts (cf. Appendix 2, Table D), which indicates that the default pitch accent is not very suitable to initiate a conversation. It may be the case that it is felt to be rather impolite to bluntly add the initiation of a conversation
6 As can be inferred from the data presented in Appendix 3, such a drastic change in number of
correct responses, only occurs for the selection contexts in the default orientation; for all other context types including the second preference only results in a moderate increase in the total number of correct responses. Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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to the background. However, it may also be the case that addition is an illogical manipulation when addressing someone, because normally there is already some form of (nonverbal) communication between speaker and hearer. Summarizing, there is one formmeaning hypothesis that does not seem to be correct: contour 1&E versus addition plus predictability. For the other three formmeaning hypotheses no such conclusion could be drawn. Therefore the abstract meaning of 1&E was strengthened to addition plus superfluousness and tested again in a second perception experiment, which also served as verification of the results found for the other three formmeaning units.
PERCEPTION EXPERIMENT 2
The same materials were used, except for the addition plus contexts, which were altered to fit the adjusted meaning hypothesis for 1&E. This time the subjects were presented with a proper name bearing one of the four contours under investigation, as well as four different situational contexts (one for each type of intentional meaning), which they had to rank from the most to the least appropriate environment for the presented stimulus utterance. It was hypothesized that the results would resemble those of Perception Experiment 1, except for the addition plus contexts: the match between the adjusted contexts and contour type 1&E was expected to be better than in Perception Experiment 1.
Method
Stimulus material. The stimulus materials from Perception Experiment 1 were used, except for the addition plus contexts, which were altered when lacking an element of annoyance (cf. Appendix 6). All combinations of contour type, proper name, and orientation were presented once to the subjects, blocking the order of presentation, the speaker, and the combination of contexts per stimulus over subjects. Subjects. Thirty- six subjects participated in the experiment, aged between 18 and 43, fourteen males and 22 females, with no self-reported hearing deficiencies. Eight subjects were linguistically naive, 10 were phoneticians, and the remaining 18 were linguists. None took part in the previous experiments. Procedure. The organization of Perception Experiment 2 resembled the procedure of the previous experiment as closely as possible.7
Results and Conclusion
Results are presented in Figures 6 and 7. Again a small number of cases (7 of the 1152) is missing from the dataset, due to a computer crash. In 59% of the total number of cases the predicted context type was selected as the most appropriate one. Confusion matrices are presented in Appendix 2. An analysis of variance involving two crossed within -subject factors ( contour and orientation) reveals effects of contour (F(3,105)= 19.06, p<.001, HuynhFeldt Epsilon = .79), orientation (F(1,35)= 6.22, p = .018), and an interaction between
7 The experiment can be accessed at Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009 <http:// fonetiek-leidenuniv.nl/caspers/le2-intro.html.>
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Figure 6 Perception Experiment 2: Percentage of preferred context type in the default orientation, broken down by contour type; predicted context type indicated by arrow; chance= 25% (shaded).
both factors ( F(3,105)= 31.16, p < .001 Huynh -Feldt Epsilon = .97). This means that in addition to the effects of contour type and the interaction between contour and orientation, there is a small main effect of orientation (viz., results are better in the default orientation). In the default orientation (Figure 6) the best results are again found in the testing category: when contour 12 is presented, the testing context is preferred in 90% of the cases. The results for contours A and 1&A are virtually the same, with responses favoring both the selection and the addition contexts. This means that the distinct preference for the addition category found in Experiment 1 has vanished, but again there is no clear difference between the selection and addition categories. The results for contour 1&E are as predicted; the adjustment of the abstract meaning and situational contexts has resulted in a substantial improvement: the number of correct responses has risen from 21% in Experiment 1 to 78% in Experiment 2. In the vocative orientation (Figure 7) the data are very close to those from Experiment 1 (cf. Figure 5), except for the 12 contours, which, unexpectedly, perform worse (but still well above chance), and the 1&E contours, which, as predicted, perform better. Post hoc analyses reveal no significant effects of training of the subjects (t (1015)= 1.12, p = .265 for naive vs. linguistically trained subjects, t (702)= Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009 .39, p = .697 for naive
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Figure 7 Perception Experiment 2: Percentage of preferred context type in the vocative orientation, broken down by contour type; predicted context type indicated by arrow; chance= 25% (shaded).
vs. phonetically trained subjects and t (1207)= 0.84, p = .403 for phonetically vs. linguistically trained subjects) or speaker of the stimulus utterances (t (1463)= 1.78, p =.075). In conclusion, the results of Experiment 2 support the revised meaning hypothesis for 1&E; otherwise, the results obtained in Experiment 1 are confirmed.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The experiments presented in this paper were intended to test abstract meaning hypotheses for four Dutch pitch accent types, stemming from the theoretical analyses formulated by Gussenhoven (1984) and Keijsper (1984). The results of the experiments support part of the hypotheses. The association between the 12 and 1&E contours and the corresponding (adjusted) situational contexts is fairly strong, whereas the results in the selection and addition categories are less clear. In the default orientation the selection and addition contexts and the A and 1&A contours behave as one group (cf. Figures 4 and 6), indicating that subjects perceive no difference between these stimuli, at least not in terms of the semantic categories at issue here. When addressing a person (vocative orientation), however, there is a clearDownloaded and consistent difference between groups, in both experiments. from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on these October 31, 2009
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The highest scores in the present investigation are found in the testing category, suggesting that testing is an adequate description of the meaning of contour 12. Further investigations of both the accent-lending rise 1 and the boundary-marking rise 2 in combination with other melodic shapes (e.g., 1A, 1&A2) are necessary to shed more light on the precise meaning of individual 1 (and 2). The finding that the 1&A contour was preferred in both the addition and selection contexts in the default orientation (Experiment 1) was related to possible politeness effects. However, the fact that in Experiment 2 there is, again, no difference between the two categories indicates that there may be a problem with either the abstract meaning hypotheses or the situational contexts. Since the A contour and the selection contexts perform well in the vocative orientation in both experiments (cf. Figures 5 and 7) a finding that cannot be explained by the alternative hypothesis that 1&A and A share the abstract meaning of addition (Gussenhoven, 1984, cf. Table 1) the contexts seem to be the crucial factor. Maybe all target utterances in the default selection and addition contexts could be interpreted as carrying new information as well as given information (cf. the discussion of the results of Experiment 1). Assuming that this is the case, that is, that the difference between the two types of contexts is too small, the findings in Experiment 1 could be explained by a general preference for the, possibly more neutral, 1&A contour; in the second perception experiment no preference is visible anymore. In the vocative orientation the behavior of the selection data is perfectly in line with the predictions in both tests, which indicates the adequacy of the description of the intention expressed by contour A. However, the random responses in the addition category seem to weaken the tenability of the meaning hypothesis proposed for 1&A. When presented with a vocative addition context, subjects do not have a clear preference for either of the four contour types, which could mean that the combination of such a context and a proper name is odd in itself (i.e., irrespective of pitch accent type). The second perception test indeed shows that the addition context type is not very popular overall. The precise cause of the problematic relationship between contour 1&A and a vocative orientation is not entirely clear, but it seems related to the somewhat paradoxal relationship between use of a proper name (presupposing a rather intimate relationship between speaker and listener) and creating a new (i.e., unpredictable) communicative situation. As mentioned earlier, it proved rather difficult to envisage situations where using a proper name to address a person constitutes the addition of new information to the background shared between speaker and listener. Further research in this field is necessary. The revised abstract meaning for 1&E seems to be supported by the results of Experiment 2: in both orientations the addition plus superfluousness contexts are matched with the 1&E contours in more than two -thirds of the cases. Results reveal rather large effects of (and interaction with) the distinction between a default and a vocative orientation. Generally speaking, the appropriateness of contour types A and 1&A depends on the orientation of the situational context. Adding new information (contour 1&A) seems a prototypical default manipulation, whereas selecting information from a background (contour A) seems a prototypical vocative manipulation. These findings suggest that the orientation of the manipulation should be carefully considered when investigating the Downloaded contribution of intonation to utterance interpretation. from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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As explained in the introduction, testing nonlexical meaning hypotheses is a difficult task. The results emerging from such experiments will never be clear- cut. For all the inherent fuzziness of the present data, however, a relatively clear association emerges between the information status of a referent as indicated by a description of the background shared between speaker and listener, and the use of a specific pitch accent type. This indicates that, in addition to marking a certain part of the utterance as important, different types of pitch accent indeed express different intentions, as asserted by nonexperimental analyses of the meaning of intonation (Gussenhoven, 1984; Keijsper, 1984; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990). Abstract meaning propositions as formulated by Gussenhoven and Keijsper may explain aspects of the use of certain Dutch pitch accent types. As for now, Keijsper s (1984) meaning analysis seems to lead to slightly better predictions, but further perception and production research on the meaning of Dutch melodic shapes is essential, especially on 1&A and A, employing semantic scales in addition to the current experimental design.
Received: February 17, 1997; revised manuscript received: June 26, 1998; accepted: September 8, 1999
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BOLINGER, D. L. (1975). Aspects of language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. BOLINGER, D. L. (1986). Intonation and its parts: Melody in spoken English. London: Edward Arnold. BOLINGER, D. L. (1989). Intonation and its uses: Melody in grammar and discourse. London: Edward Arnold. BRAZIL, D. (1975). Discourse intonation I. English Language Research, Birmingham University. BRAZIL, D., COULTHARD, M., & JOHNS, C. (1980). Discourse intonation and language teaching. London: Longman. CASPERS, J. (1994). Pitch movements under time pressure. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics. CASPERS, J. (1997). Testing the meaning of four Dutch pitch accent types. In G. Kokkinakis, N. Fakotakis, & E. Dermatas (Eds.), Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp.863 866). Patras: University of Patras. CASPERS, J. (1998). Whos next? The melodic marking of question versus continuation in Dutch. Language and Speech, 41, 371 394. CASPERS, J. (1999). An experimental investigation of meaning differences between the early and the late accent-lending fall in Dutch. In R. van Bezooijen & R. Kager (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands, 1999 (pp.2739). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CASPERS, J., & Van HEUVEN, V . J. (1995). Effects of time pressure on the choice of accent-lending and boundary-marking pitch configurations in Dutch. In J. M. Pardo, E. Enrquez, J. Ortega, J. Ferreiros, J. Macas, & F. J. Falverde (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp.1001 1004), Madrid. CASPERS, J., Van HEUVEN, V. J., & Van ZWOL, N. (1998). An experimental investigation of meaning differences between the pointed hat contour and the accent-lending fall in Dutch. In R. van Bezooijen & R. Kager (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands, 1998 (pp. 65 79). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. COLLIER, R. (1989). On the phonology of Dutch intonation. In F. J. Heyvaert & F. Steurs (Eds.), Worlds behind words (pp.245 259). Leuven: Leuven University Press. Intonation CRUTTENDEN, A. (1986). . Cambridge,by U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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APPENDIX 1
Contexts
In this appendix the 24 Dutch contexts used in Experiment 1 are presented, with a translation in English, and without the accompanying proper name (since these were varied). D stands for default orientation, V for vocative orientation, the numbers represent the intended meaning category (1: testing, 2: selection, 3: addition, and 4: addition plus predictability ), and a to c indicate the various versions of each context type. D1a Je praat met een collega over een mogelijke schuldige aan diefstal; je denkt dat Marina de schuldige is, maar je bent er helemaal niet zeker van; je wilt verifiren of die collega je vermoeden deelt: Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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[You are talking to a colleague about a possible party guilty of theft; you think that Marina is the offender, but you are not very sure; you want to verify whether your colleague shares your suspicion:] D1b Je leerlingen vertellen je dat Marina niet zal komen vandaag omdat ze naar het Binnenhof moet voor een vergadering van de vaste-kamercommissie voor onderwijs. Je bent uiterst verbaasd: is dit een grapje?: [Your pupils tell you that Marina will not attend classes today because she has to go to the Houses of Parliament for a meeting of the permanent education committee. You are utterly astonished: is this a joke?:] D1c Je neemt deel aan een docentenvergadering. Er moet een leerling worden benoemd in het schoolbestuur. Een aantal kandidaten wordt geopperd door je collega s en je hebt zelf iemand in gedachten waarvan je absoluut niet weet hoe die persoon zal vallen bij de rest; je doet een voorzichtige suggestie: [You are attending a staff meeting. A pupil has to be appointed to the school administration. A number of candidates are put forward by your colleagues and you yourself have someone in mind of whom you are absolutely unsure whether that person will be acceptable to the others; you offer a tentative suggestion:] D2a Je bent tekenleraar en je geeft antwoord op een vraag van een collega wie van twee leerlingen beter kan tekenen, Marina of Cornelis: [You are an art- teacher and you answer a question of a colleague which of two pupils draws better, Marina or Cornelis:] D2b Je neemt deel aan een rapportvergadering over een specifieke klas; er is sprake van het toekennen van een boekenbeurs aan de leerling met de beste cijfers. Als je aan de beurt bent geef je de naam van de leerling met de beste resultaten in jouw vak: [You are attending a staff meeting about a specific class; there is talk of awarding a book grant to the pupil with the best marks. When it is your turn you mention the name of the pupil with the best results in your subject:] D2c Je neemt deel aan een docentenvergadering. Er moet een leerling worden aangewezen als klassevertegenwoordiger. Er is een lijstje kandidaten beschikbaar, en als je aan de beurt bent noem je jouw voorkeur: [You are attending a staff meeting. A pupil has to be appointed class representative. There is a list of candidates available, and when it is your turn you mention your preference:] D3a Je bespreekt met een collega welke leerlingen geschikt zouden zijn om te betrekken bij het opzetten van een schoolkrant; er schiet je eentje te binnen (die journalist wil worden): [You are speaking with a colleague about which pupils would be suited for involvement in setting up a school paper; there is one that springs to mind (who wants to be a journalist):] D3b Je bespreekt met collega s het probleem van voortdurende diefstallen uit de kas van de kantine. Allerlei aspecten van de diefstallen worden besproken en ineens valt alles voor je op z n plaats; de moet het zijn: Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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[You are in a meeting with colleagues about the problem of ongoing thefts from the cafeteria cash register. A number of aspects of the thefts are being discussed and suddenly everything is clear to you; it has to be her:] D3c Je neemt deel aan een docentenvergadering. Er moet een leerling worden benoemd in het schoolbestuur. Een aantal kandidaten wordt geopperd door je collega s en je hebt zelf iemand in gedachten waarvan je vrij zeker bent dat ze goed zal vallen bij de rest: [You are attending a staff meeting. A pupil has to be appointed to the school administration. A number of candidates are put forward by your colleagues and you yourself have someone in mind of whom you are quite certain that she will be acceptable to the rest:] D4a Een collega heeft je net gevraagd welke leerling die ochtend afwezig was; je hebt de naam Marina genoemd, maar je collega heeft duidelijk niet goed geluisterd en vraagt Wie? Je antwoordt, een beetje gergerd: [A colleague has just asked you which pupil was absent that morning; you mentioned the name Marina, but your colleague apparently has not listened well and asks: Who? You reply, somewhat annoyed:] D4b Je hebt je collegas bij elkaar geroepen i.v.m. het probleem van voortdurende diefstallen uit de kas van de kantine. Jij weet om wie het gaat, want jij hebt haar die ochtend op heterdaad betrapt. Het is echter niet de eerste keer: [You have called a meeting of your colleagues in view of the problem of ongoing thefts from the cafetaria cash register. You know who it is, because you have caught her in the act that morning. However, it is not the first time:] D4c Je bespreekt met een collega welke leerlingen geschikt zouden zijn om te betrekken bij het opzetten van een schoolkrant; er schiet je eentje te binnen die wel zeer voor de hand ligt omdat jullie haar de vorige docentenvergadering een prijs hebben toegekend in een journalistieke opstelwedstrijd: [You are speaking with a colleague about which pupils would be suited for involvement in setting up a school paper; there is one that springs to mind who is very obvious since you awarded her a prize in a journalistic essay competition at the previous staff meeting:] V1a Je leerlingen zijn bezig om een proefwerk te maken; je ziet dat een leerling al een tijdje bleek en met gesloten ogen achteroverleunt; je maakt je enigszins zorgen en loopt erheen: [Your pupils are doing a test paper; you notice that a pupil has been leaning back pale and with closed eyes for quite a while; you are somewhat worried and you walk over:] V1b Je hebt net een moeilijke vraag gesteld aan je klas; er komt geen antwoord, en je kiest dan n specifieke leerling uit om het antwoord te geven (maar je weet niet zeker of die het juiste antwoord zal weten): [You have just put a difficult question to your class; there is no answer, and you then choose one specific pupil to answer (but you are not sure that this person knows the correct answer):]
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V1c Je wilt een collega spreken over iets belangrijks; deze collega is echter in de docentenkamer in gesprek met anderen. Je gaat erbij staan en probeert: [You want to speak to a colleague about something important; this colleague, however, is in the staff room talking to others. You join them and try:] V2a Je hebt net een vraag gesteld aan je klas; er komt geen antwoord, en je kiest dan n specifieke leerling uit om het antwoord te geven (een persoon die over het algemeen juiste antwoorden geeft): [You have just put a question to your class; there is no answer, and you then choose one specific pupil to answer (a person that generally gives the correct answers):] V2b Je zit een rapportvergadering voor. Je bent de meningen van de verschillende leraren over een bepaalde leerling aan het inventariseren en geeft de beurt aan een volgende collega om haar zegje te doen: [You are presiding over a staff meeting. You are drawing up an inventory of the opinions of the different teachers regarding a specific pupil and you give the turn to the next colleague to say what she has to say:] V2c Op de agenda staat een aantal spreekbeurten; na een paar inleidende woorden over het eerste onderwerp spreek je de betreffende leerling aan: [On the agenda are a number of classroom presentations; after a few introductory remarks about the first subject you address the pupil concerned:] V3a Je zit met een collega proefwerken te corrigeren in de docentenkamer. Ineens zie je dat leerlingen uit de klas van die collega in de gang in een vechtpartij verwikkeld zijn. Je collega heeft niks in de gaten en je vestigt haar aandacht op de situatie door haar naam te noemen: [Together with a colleague you are correcting test papers in the staff room. All at once you notice that pupils from the class of your colleague in the corridor are entangled in a fight. Your colleague doesnt notice it and you draw her attention to the situation by speaking her name:] V3b Je leerlingen zijn bezig om een proefwerk te maken. Ineens komt de concirge binnen en fluistert in je oor dat er een belangrijk telefoontje is voor een van je leerlingen. Je haalt de betreffende leerling gedecideerd uit haar werk: [Your pupils are doing a test paper. All at once the school janitor comes in and whispers in your ear that there is an important call for one of your pupils. You firmly take the pupil concerned away from her work:] V3c Er moeten een aantal boeken worden teruggebracht naar de bibliotheek, een klusje dat je normaal opdraagt aan een specifieke leerling; deze is echter vandaag ziek en je kiest een andere leerling uit om het te doen: [There are a number of books that have to be taken back to the library, a task which is normally performed by a specific pupil; however, he is sick today and you select another pupil to do the task:]
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V4a Een van je leerlingen zit onverstoorbaar achterstevoren te kleppen: [One of your pupils is chattering away with her back to you:] V4b Je bent dia s aan het vertonen, en de slee loopt vast. Er is een leerling in de klas die heel goed is in het weer op gang helpen van het ding, en je doet het door iedereen verwachte: je spreekt die leerling aan: [You are showing slides, and the cartridge gets stuck. There is a pupil in the class that is very good at getting the thing going again, and you do what everyone expects: you address that pupil:] V4c Je wilt met je les beginnen. Er staat nog een leerling in de deuropening te praten met iemand op de gang; je spreekt haar lichtelijk gergerd aan: [You want to start your lesson. There is a pupil still standing in the doorway, talking to someone in the corridor; you address her in a slightly irritated fashion:]
APPENDIX 2
Confusion matrices
TABLE A Paper-and-pencil experiment: absolute frequency (and percentage) of chosen meaning category in the default orientation, broken down by context type; bold faced cells contain correct responses
Responded meaning category

Context type testing selection addition addition plus total Testing 49 0 7 5 61 (65) (0) (9) (7) (20) Selection 7 54 8 15 84 (9) (72) (11) (20) (28) Addition 14 20 51 14 99 (19) (27) (68) (18) (33) Addition plus 5 1 9 41 56 (7) (1) (12) (55) (19) Total 75 75 75 75 300
TABLE B Paper-and-pencil experiment: absolute frequency (and percentage) of chosen meaning category in the vocative orientation, broken down by context type; bold faced cells contain correct responses
Responded meaning category

Context type testing selection addition addition plus total Testing 41 2 7 7 57 (55) (3) (9) (9) (19) Selection 15 34 20 20 89 (20) (45) (27) (27) (29) Addition 15 7 47 8 77 (20) (9) (63) (11) (26) Addition plus 4 32 1 40 77 (5) (43) (1) (53) (26) Total 75 75 75 75 300
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Perception Experiment 1: absolute frequency (and percentage) of preferred contour type in the default orientation, broken down by context type; bold faced cells contain correct responses
Preferred contour type

Context type testing selection addition addition plus total 358 2 7 0 367 12 (94) (1) (2) (0) (24) 12 120 107 91 330 A (3) (31) (28) (24) (22) 1&A 11 262 267 209 749 (3) (68) (70) (55) (49) 1&E 1 0 0 80 81 (0) (0) (0) (21) (5) Total 382 384 381 380 1527
TABLE D Perception Experiment 1: absolute frequency (and percentage) of preferred contour type in the vocative orientation, broken down by context type; bold faced cells contain correct responses

TABLE E Perception Experiment 2: absolute frequency (and percentage) of preferred context type in the default orientation, broken down by contour type; bold faced cells contain correct responses
Preferred context type

Contour type 12 A 1&A 1&E total Testing 129 11 2 7 149 (90) (8) (1) (5) (26) Selection 4 56 54 15 129 (3) (39) (38) (10) (23) Addition 11 64 61 10 146 (7) (45) (42) (7) (25) Addition plus 0 11 27 112 150 (0) (8) (19) (78) (26) Total 144 142 144 144 574
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TABLE F Perception Experiment 2: absolute frequency (and percentage) of preferred context type in the vocative orientation, broken down by contour type; bold faced cells contain correct responses
Preferred context type

Contour type 12 A 1&A 1&E total Testing 83 10 30 27 150 (59) (7) (21) (19) (26) Selection 36 112 40 7 195 (25) (78) (28) (5) (34) Addition 11 8 36 12 67 (8) (5) (25) (8) (12) Addition plus 12 14 37 96 159 (8) (10) (26) (68) (28) Total 142 144 143 142 571
APPENDIX 3
Mean percentage of correct responses per context for the paper-and-pencil experiment (Paper), for the first choice of Perception Experiment 1 (Pref1-I), for the first and second choice of Perception Experiment 1 (Pref1-II) and for the first choice of Perception Experiment 2 (Pref2-I altered contexts are marked by *). Orientation default Meaning testing Version a b c a b c a b c a b c a b c a b c a b c Paper 72 48 76 92 52 72 76 68 60 36 52 76 60 56 48 40 60 36 72 68 48 Pref1-I 92 93 95 21 29 44 72 79 58 52 9 2 77 88 57 69 79 88 35 24 6 Pref1-II 96 98 98 94 95 94 94 98 96 71 16 5 92 98 73 95 94 97 68 52 36 84 43 87 Pref2-I 92 89 89 31 38 48 46 31 49 87 60* 85* 62 76 47 73 74 86 20 21 33 82 47* 66
selection
addition
addition plus
vocative
testing
selection
addition
addition plus
a 52 62 b 72 23 c Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on36 October 31, 2009 61
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APPENDIX 4
Stimulus contours
Figure 8 Pitch contours realized by the female and male speaker on the four proper names; accented syllables are indicated by gray rectangles. Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009
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APPENDIX 5
TABLE A Reduced dataset Perpection Experiment 1 (without context D4a): absolute frequency (and percentage) of preferred contour type in the default orientation, broken down by context type; bold faced cells contain correct responses

Context type testing selection addition addition plus total TABLE B Reduced dataset Perception Experiment 1 (without contexts V2a, V2c and V4c): absolute frequency (and percentage) of preferred contour type in the vocative orientation, broken down by context type; bold faced cells contain correct responses 358 2 7 0 367 12 (94) (1) (2) (0) (26) 12 120 107 84 323 A (3) (31) (28) (33) (23) 1&A 11 262 267 154 694 (3) (68) (70) (61) (50) 1&E 1 0 0 14 15 (0) (0) (0) (6) (1) Total 382 384 381 252 1399

APPENDIX 6
Altered contexts Perception Experiment 2 D4b Je zit met een aantal collega s in de docentenkamer te praten over een leerling die die ochtend gearresteerd is wegens brandstichting. De hele school gonst ervan, maar een van je collega s heeft het nieuws blijkbaar gemist, want hij vraagt over wie jullie het eigenlijk hebben. Je antwoordt, wat spottend:
[You are talking with a number of colleagues in the staff room about a pupil who has been arrested for arson that morning. The whole school is buzzing with it, but one of your collegues apparently missed the news, since he asks about who you are speaking. You reply, a little sneeringly:] D4c Je neemt deel aan een docentenvergadering. Er moet een leerling worden aangewezen als klassenvertegenwoordiger. Je ergert je nogal aan het31, feit Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 2009dat niet iedereen lijkt te
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luisteren, en als inderdaad iemand aangeeft niet te weten over welke leerling jullie aan het praten zijn, noem je gerriteerd de naam: [You are attending a staff meeting. A pupil has to be appointed class representative. You are rather annoyed by the fact that not everyone seems to be listening, and when someone indicates that in fact he doesnt know which pupil you are talking about, you say the name, irritated:] V4b Je bent dia s aan het vertonen, en de slee loopt vast. Er is n leerling die heel goed is in het weer op gang helpen van het ding, maar hij maakt geen aanstalten om je te komen helpen; je spreekt hem dus maar aan: [You are showing slides, and the cartridge gets stuck. There is a pupil in the class that is very good at getting the thing going again, but he doesnt make any move to come and help you; so finally you address him:]

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Language and Speech

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LANGUAGE AND SPEECH, 2000, 43 (2), 127 161

Experiments on the Meaning of Four Types of Single-Accent Intonation Patterns in D utch*

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

Analyses of the meaning of Dutch intonation

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

Notation and Meaning

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

Responded meaning category

Responded meaning category

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Preferred contour type

Preferred contour type

Preferred context type

Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on October 31, 2009

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

Preferred context type

a 52 62 b 72 23 c Downloaded from http://las.sagepub.com by Sorin Ciutacu on36 October 31, 2009 61

The meaning of single-accent intonation patterns

Preferred contour type

Preferred contour type

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