The prosody of surprise questions in Estonian

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10141328
AutoresEva Liina Asu (0000-0003-2644-258X, Institute of the Estonian Language, autor correspondente), Heete Sahkai (0009-0007-4057-741X, Institute of the Estonian Language), Pärtel Lippus (0000-0003-4407-811X, Institute of the Estonian Language)
Ano2023
Volume60
Fascículo1
Páginas7-27
Data de publicação2023-03-13
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0022-2267 • E-ISSN: 1469-7742
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0022226723000014
OpenAlexW4324060384
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas28

This paper examines the role of prosody in a little-studied type of non-canonical questions: syntactically and lexically canonical interrogative sentences that have been uttered by the speaker in order to express surprise. The study compares Estonian surprise questions with string-identical information-seeking questions elicited by means of context descriptions. The materials comprise 1,008 utterances by 21 speakers. It is concluded that the prosody of the examined utterances has three roles that are relevant to the expression of surprise by ordinary interrogative sentences. First, the enhanced prosodic realisation of the utterances as manifested in a longer duration, a wider pitch range, and a more frequent occurrence of upstepped pitch accents conveys emotional expressivity. Second, lower pitch along with the creaky voice quality signals that the utterances are not canonical questions, while the main prosodic correlate of information-seeking questions is high pitch. Phonological pitch accents and boundary tones, however, are not used to distinguish between surprise questions and information-seeking questions. Third, the nuclear accent placement signals an information structure that is associated with the expression of incongruity or counterexpectation: the focal accent can evoke an alternative (set) that arises from the speaker’s expectations

Acoustics · Context (archaeology · Duration (music · Estonian · Expression (computer science · Interrogative · Linguistics · Physics · Pitch accent · Prosody · Speech recognition · Stress (linguistics · Surprise · Communication · Computer Science · History · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation