Prosody and the production of structurally ambiguous phrases

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Published: Oct 24, 2018
Keywords:
syntax, prosody, French

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Amanda C. Edmonds
Jason Killam
Audrey Liljestrand

Abstract

Our work builds on a previous study concerning the role of prosody in interpretation of relative clause (RC) attachment among adult learners of French (Dekydstpotter, Donaldson, Edmonds, Liljestrand, & Petrush, under review). In particular, we further explore the hypothesis set forth by Fodor (2002) that the default prosody in French is at the root of the preference among native speakers to attach RCs to the first noun in a complex (genitive) noun phrase. We test this hypothesis with data from a French linguist who produced the stimuli for Dekydspotter et al. and add data from three naïve native speakers. The latter three speakers performed two tasks: one in which the fully ambiguous sentences were disambiguated by information provided in a context, the second in which sentences were produced as minimal pairs, with the intended interpretation indicated in parentheses. The data were analyzed for the use of both final lengthening and changes in fundamental frequency as markers of prosodic boundaries. It was found that all four speakers used final lengthening as predicted but that the results from fundamental frequency were less consistent. Additionally, we found a clear effect of task, with greater differentiation made between interpretations in the minimal pairs task.

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Issue
Vol. 6 No. 1 (2006)
Section
Articles

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