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Question intonation contours as dynamic epistemic operators

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Abstract

Although intonation has been traditionally claimed to be a strong indicator of the epistemic commitments of the participants in a discourse, very few empirical investigations have addressed specific semantic hypotheses related to the precise epistemic contribution of question intonation to utterance interpretation. The main aim of this paper is to test the claim that intonation in Catalan plays an important role in the specification of dynamic epistemic commitments in two complementary directions, i.e., speaker commitments to the speaker’s own proposition and speaker agreement with the addressee’s proposition. Following Krifka’s commitment space semantics (Krifka 2015, 2017), we will test the claim that question intonation in Catalan encodes different levels of assert (commitment) and reject ((dis)agreement) epistemic operators. A total of 119 Central Catalan listeners participated in an acceptability judgment task and were asked to rate the perceived degree of acceptability between a set of interrogative utterances (variously produced with one of four intonational contours) and their previous discourse context (which was controlled for epistemic bias). Results showed that question intonation contours encode binary (and not degree) distinctions in speaker commitment and speaker agreement. That is, results showed that question intonation encodes fine-grained information about the epistemic stance of the speaker, not only in relation to the speaker’s own propositions but also in relation to the addressee’s propositions. From a crosslinguistic point of view, we argue that intonation closely parallels the function of modal markers in their encoding of speaker commitment and speaker agreement operators.

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Notes

  1. As we will see below, in order to control for potential confounding effects of morphosyntactic marking, none of the sentences included in our experiment involved the use of que particles or the use of explicit subjects (e.g., Tens gana? ‘Are (you) hungry?’; see Sect. 2.2 below).

  2. This is represented as follows: [ForceP assert [TP φ] H*] (see Krifka 2017:11). It is important to point out that semantic operators can be expressed through different grammatical means in different languages. For example, the focus operator can be expressed crosslinguistically (a) by means of intonation, (b) via syntactic movement optionally combined with prosodic mechanisms to ensure prominence, or (c) by using specific morphemes also optionally combined with syntactic displacement, prosodic marking, or a combination of both (Elordieta 2007).

  3. Remember that Catalan, similarly to English, also uses SV inversion in non-disbelief questions and declarative syntax in disbelief questions (see Prieto and Rigau 2007 for more information).

  4. Website available at https://www.surveygizmo.com. Accessed 7 September 2017.

  5. As one of the reviewers points out, there is no incompatibility between the joint conveyance of low epistemic commitment and the conveyance of low epistemic agreement. However, we would like to point out that, while it is true that these dimensions can be expressed together, it is important that we regard them as independent from one another. Crucially, low epistemic agreement can be paired either with low epistemic commitment (i.e., the speaker expresses low commitment to the truth of a proposition that at the same time challenges a proposed change of commitment) or with high epistemic commitment (i.e., the speaker expresses high commitment to the truth of a proposition that at the same time challenges a proposed change of commitment).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the three reviewers and the editor, J.A. Legate, for their very helpful comments on the first version of this manuscript. We also thank B. Braun, T. Espinal, C. Gussenhoven, and M. Romero for thoughtful ideas and comments on several parts of the manuscript. This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2015 66533 “Intonational and gestural meaning in language”) and by a grant awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya (2014SGR 925) to the Prosodic Studies Group.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICREA, Pg. Lluís Companys 23, 08010, Barcelona, Spain

    Pilar Prieto

  2. Dept. of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Roc Boronat, 138, 08018, Barcelona, Spain

    Pilar Prieto & Joan Borràs-Comes

  3. Dept. of Spanish Philology & Dept. of Language and Literature Education and Social Sciences Education, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain

    Joan Borràs-Comes

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  1. Pilar Prieto
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Correspondence to Joan Borràs-Comes.

Appendix

Appendix

Catalan versions (and English translations) for one of the two contexts used for each pragmatic meaning in the acceptability judgment task. Target utterances are shown in italics; L, M, and H stand for Low, Mid, and High degrees of Commitment (C) and Agreement (A), respectively.

1.1 Commitment

  1. (CL)

    Fa poc que t’has mudat a un nou barri i aquesta setmana estan de festa major. El teu veí et diu que avui a la nit fan el correfoc, però no saps quin recorregut fa.

    Target Sentence: —Passaran per sota de casa?

    English translation: Not long ago you moved to a new neighborhood. This week it is celebrating its annual fiesta. Tonight your neighbor tells you there is going to be a traditional street parade with dragons and fireworks, but you don’t know what route it will take.

    —Will they go by our house?

  2. (CM)

    Som al novembre, i ja fa unes setmanes que a totes les fruiteries hi ha mandarines. Surts a comprar i passes per davant d’una fruiteria, suposant que en deuen tenir.

    Target Sentence: —Teniu mandarines?

    English translation: It’s November, and tangerines have been available for a few weeks now. When you go out shopping, you stop by your local greengrocer’s, assuming they’ll have some.

    —Do you have tangerines?

  3. (CH)

    Són quasi les dues del migdia i tu i la Sònia sou al despatx treballant, com de costum. Estàs concentrada amb les teves coses quan de sobte sents que els budells li comencen a roncar.

    Target Sentence: —Tens gana?

    English translation: It’s almost two in the afternoon and you and Sonia are together working at the office, as always. You’re concentrating on your work, when all of a sudden you hear her stomach growl.

    —Are you hungry?

1.2 Agreement

  1. (AH)

    Has intentat trucar a un amic un parell de cops però comunica. Al cap d’una estona et truca ell, però el sents una mica tallat i no saps si l’has sentit gaire bé.

    —Perdona, estava parlant amb ma germana.

    Target Sentence: —Parlaves amb ta germana?

    English translation: You’ve tried calling a friend a couple of times but without success. A second later he calls you, but you can’t hear him very well and you don’t know if you heard what he said clearly.

    —Sorry. I was talking with my sister.

    —You were talking with your sister?

  2. (AM)

    Són festes majors i avui a la nit fan els correfocs. Havies parlat amb en Joan i en Pau i t’havien dit que no vindrien perquè eren fora. Ara et trobes en Pere, un altre dels teus amics, i et diu que finalment hi podrà venir tothom.

    —Serem tots els de la colla.

    Target Sentence: —Serem tots els de la colla?

    English translation: It’s fiesta time in the city and tonight they are going to do the traditional street parade with dragons and fireworks. You are planning to go see it with some friends. You already spoke to your friends Joan and Pau, but they told you that they were out of town and wouldn’t be there tonight. Now you see Pere, another member of the group, and he tells you that in the end everyone will be able to come.

    —We’ll all be there.

    —We’ll all be there?

  3. (AL)

    La teva companya de pis és fotògrafa, i avui, que feia un dia esplèndid i assolellat, havia marxat cap a Salou per fer un reportatge de casament. Quan torna et diu que se’ls ha posat a ploure. Tu no t’ho acabes de creure perquè feia dia de tot menys de ploure.

    —Doncs se’ns ha posat a ploure.

    Target Sentence: —Se us ha posat a ploure?

    English translation: Your roommate is a photographer. It’s a gorgeous, sunny day out today, and she has gone to Salou to cover a wedding. When she gets back, she tells you that it started raining while she was there. You can’t believe it because it has been such a gorgeous day.

    —So we got caught in the rain.

    —You got caught in the rain?

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Prieto, P., Borràs-Comes, J. Question intonation contours as dynamic epistemic operators. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 36, 563–586 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-017-9382-z

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