On the prosody of French ambiguous multiple negative sentences
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22130232 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Viviane Déprez (0000-0002-2121-5559, Aix-Marseille Université), Jeremy Daniel Yeaton (University of California, Irvine & CNRS, Marseille, FR), Jeremy Yeaton (0000-0002-6650-8080, University of California, Irvine) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Glossa a journal of general linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2397-1835 • E-ISSN: 2397-1835 |
| Publisher | Open Library of the Humanities (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.16995/glossa.5756 |
| OpenAlex | W4200258569 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 35 |
While it has long been assumed that prosody can help resolve syntactic and semantic ambiguities, empirical evidence has shown that the mapping between prosody and meaning is complex (Hirschberg & Avesani 2000; Jackendoff 1972). This paper investigates the prosody of ambiguous French sentences with multiple potentially negative terms that allow two semantically very distinct interpretations—a single negation reading involving negative concord (NC), and a double negative reading (DN) with a positive meaning reflecting a strictly compositional interpretation— with the goal to further research on the role of prosody in ambiguities by examining whether intonation can be recruited by speakers to signal distinct interpretations of these sentences to hearers. Twenty native speakers produced transitive sentences with potentially negative terms embedded in contexts designed to elicit single-negation or double-negation readings. Analysis regarding the F0 and the duration of the utterances revealed distinct prosodic profiles for the two readings, confirming previous evidence that speakers can produce characteristic acoustic cues to signal intended distinctive meanings (Kraljic & Brennan 2005; Syrett, Simon & Nisula 2014). Our results reveal that the NC readings feature a focused subject and a post-focally more compressed object, in contrast to the DN readings where both the subject and the object were independently focused. They do not relate DN to contradiction but link negative meaning with focus on French negative concord items (NCI). The paper discusses broad implications of these findings for theoretical approaches to NC and outlines further questions for the syntax-prosody interface of these constructions
Linguistics · Negation · Prosody · Syntax · Transitive relation · Computer Science · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
Negative Concord and the Nature of Negative Concord Items
Ggplot2
Negation and Clausal Structure
Classical NEG Raising
Fast Stable Restricted Maximum Likelihood and Marginal Likelihood Estimation of Semiparametric Generalized Linear Models
The control of the false discovery rate in multiple testing under dependency
Stable and Efficient Multiple Smoothing Parameter Estimation for Generalized Additive Models
Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4
Information Structure and Sentence Form
Intentions in Communication
Meaning of words and meaning of sentences
Negative Heads and the Neg Criterion
Licensing Double Negation in NC and non-NC languages
The Genesis of Negative Concord
Prosody and gesture constrain the interpretation of double negation
Double Negation in a Negative Concord language
Intonational encoding of double negation in Catalan
Metalinguistic Negation and Pragmatic Ambiguity
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |