Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

How listeners resolve reference: Effects of pitch accent, edge tones, and lexical contrast

Foltz, Anouschka

Abstract Details

2010, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Linguistics.
Speakers use prosodic structure to group words together into prosodic phrases and to highlight individual words by making them perceptually more salient. This dissertation examined the impact of prosody on the process of identifying the referents of definite noun phrases (e.g. ‘the purple bottle’) across utterances. Participants’ eye movements were monitored as they used a mouse to select objects on a computer screen in response to auditory instructions (e.g. ‘Click on the purple bottle’). The research explored two primary aspects of intonation, pitch accents (tonal targets associated with metrically stressed syllables) and edge tones (pitch movements associated with the edge of a phrase). While previous studies focused on the role of local pitch accents (i.e. in the target instruction), especially L+H* or ”contrastive” accents, the current work considers the effect of prosodic context – non-local edge tones and pitch accents (i.e. in preceding instructions) – on referent identification. This dissertation poses two novel questions about the function of prosody in referent identification: How do local and non-local pitch accents act in combination to affect referent identification? How do pitch accents interact with phrasal edge tone patterns to affect referent identification? Across utterances, pitch accents were placed in locations that appropriately or inappropriately marked a lexical difference (e.g. a difference only in color adjective such as ‘yellow bottle’ ⇒ ‘purple bottle’). Expanding on previous findings, appropriate and inappropriate pitch accent locations were expected to speed up and slow down referent identification, respectively. Edge tone patterns were expected to modulate the effects of pitch accents by connecting or separating successive utterances. Results indicate that both local and non-local pitch accents can influence the process of referent identification in spoken discourse processing. In addition, this effect is conditioned by the structure of prosodic phrasing (edge tone type) in the discourse. Implications of the results for models of discourse processing will be discussed.
Shari Speer (Advisor)
Cynthia Clopper (Committee Member)
Judith Tonhauser (Committee Member)
263 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Foltz, A. (2010). How listeners resolve reference: Effects of pitch accent, edge tones, and lexical contrast [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1282132210

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Foltz, Anouschka. How listeners resolve reference: Effects of pitch accent, edge tones, and lexical contrast. 2010. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1282132210.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Foltz, Anouschka. "How listeners resolve reference: Effects of pitch accent, edge tones, and lexical contrast." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1282132210

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)