Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T23:18:36.730Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Prosodic disambiguation of scopally ambiguous quantificational sentences in a discourse context1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2014

KRISTEN SYRETT*
Affiliation:
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick
GEORGIA SIMON
Affiliation:
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick
KIRSTEN NISULA
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
*
Authors' address: (Syrett) Department of Linguistics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick, 18 Seminary Place, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USAk-syrett@ruccs.rutgers.edu

Abstract

Researchers have long sought to determine the strength of the relation between prosody and the interpretation of scopally ambiguous sentences in English involving quantification and negation (e.g. All the men didn't go). While Jackendoff (1972) proposed a one-to-one mapping between sentence-final contour and the scope of negation (falling contour: narrow scope, fall-rise contour: wide scope), in subsequent work, researchers (e.g. Ladd 1980; Ward & Hirschberg 1985; Kadmon & Roberts 1986) disentangled the link between prosody and scope. Even though these pragmatic accounts predict variability in production, they still allow for some correlation between scope and prosody. To date, we lack systematic evidence to bear on this discussion. Here, we present findings from two perception experiments aimed at investigating whether prosodic information – including, but not limited to, sentence-final contour – can successfully disambiguate such sentences. We show that when speakers provide consistent auditory cues to sentential interpretation, hearers can successfully recruit these cues to arrive at the correct interpretation as intended by the speaker. In light of these results, we argue that psycholinguistic studies (including language acquisition studies) investigating participants’ ability to access multiple interpretations of scopally ambiguous sentences – quantificational and otherwise – should carefully control for prosody.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

We gratefully acknowledge a Rutgers University startup grant to K. Syrett and a research grant from the Aresty Research Center at Rutgers University. This work benefitted from technical support from the Rutgers Phonology and Field Research Laboratory, discussions with Shigeto Kawahara, contributions from Stephen Klimashousky, and helpful feedback from three anonymous Journal of Linguistics reviewers. We thank audiences at ETAP 2 (2011), NELS 43 (2012), and The University of Pennsylvania for their helpful comments and observations.

References

REFERENCES

Akmajian, Adrian & Jackendoff, Ray S.. 1970. Coreferentiality and stress. Linguistic Inquiry 1.1, 124126.Google Scholar
Albritton, David W., McKoon, Gail & Ratcliff, Roger. 1996. Reliability of prosodic cues for resolving syntactic ambiguity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 22.3, 714735.Google Scholar
Baltazani, Mary. 2002. The prosodic structure of quantificational sentences in Greek. In Andronis, Mary, Debenport, Erin, Pycha, Anne & Yoshimura, Keiko (eds.), Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 38, 6378. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Baltazani, Mary. 2003. Quantifier scope and the role of intonation in Greek. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Beach, Cheryl M. 1991. The interpretation of prosodic patterns at points of syntactic structure ambiguity: Evidence for cue trading relations. Journal of Memory and Language 30.6, 644663.Google Scholar
Beach, Cheryl M., Katz, William F. & Skowronski, Aire. 1996. Children's processing of prosodic cues for phrasal interpretation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 99.2, 11481160.Google Scholar
Bel, Bernard & Marlien, Isabelle (eds.). 2002. Speech Prosody 2002. Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole et Langage.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul. 2001. Praat: A system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International 5.910, 341345.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight L. 1965. Forms of English: Accent, morpheme, order. Edited by Isamu Abe & Tetsuya Kanekiyo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Braun, Bettina. 2006. Phonetics and phonology of thematic contrast in German. Language and Speech 49.4, 451493.Google Scholar
Braun, Bettina & Chen, Aoju. 2010. Intonation of ‘now’ in resolving scope ambiguity in English and Dutch. Journal of Phonetics 38.3, 431444.Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 1997. The great scope inversion conspiracy. Linguistics and Philosophy 20.2, 175194.Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 2003. On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26.5, 511545.Google Scholar
Cedrus Corporation. 2012. SuperLab 4.5 [Stimulus presentation software]. San Pedro, CA.Google Scholar
Cooper, William E. & Paccia-Cooper, Jeanne. 1980. Syntax and speech. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Janet Dean. 2002a. Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. In Hirotani, Masako (ed.), North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 32, 113132. Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Fodor, Janet Dean. 2002b. Psycholinguistics cannot escape prosody. In Bel, & Marlien, (eds.), 8390.Google Scholar
Frazier, Lyn & Clifton, Charles Jr. 1996. Construal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gualmini, Andrea, Hulsey, Sarah, Hacquard, Valentine & Fox, Danny. 2008. The question–answer requirement for scope assignment. Natural Language Semantics 16.3, 205237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia. 1985. A theory of scalar implicature (natural languages, pragmatics, inference). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia & Avesani, Cinzia. 1997. The role of prosody in disambiguating potentially ambiguous utterances in English and Italian. In Botinis, Antonis, Kouroupetroglou, Georgios & Carayiannis, George (eds.), Intonation: Theory, models, and applications [Proceedings of European Speech Communication Association (ESCA) Workshop], 189192. European Speech Communication Association & University of Athens Department of Informatics.Google Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia & Avesani, Cinzia. 2000. Prosodic disambiguation in English and Italian. In Botinis, Antonis (ed.), Intonation: Theory, models, and applications, 8795. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray S. 1972. Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, Scott. 2006. Prosodic phrasing and logical scope in English. Presented at the 19th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Joachim. 1984. Funktionale Satzperspektive und Illokutionssemantik. Linguistische Berichte 91, 2558.Google Scholar
Kadmon, Nirit & Roberts, Craige. 1986. Prosody and scope: The role of discourse structure. In Farley, Anne M., Farley, Peter T. & McCullough, Karl-Erik (eds.), Parasession on Pragmatics and Grammatical Theory: Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS) 22, Part 2, 1628. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Kitagawa, Yoshihisa & Fodor, Janet Dean. 2006. Prosodic influence on syntactic judgments. In Fenselow, Gisbert, Fery, Caroline, Schlesewsky, Matthias & Vogel, Ralf (eds.), Gradience in grammar: Generative perspectives, 336358. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koizumi, Yukiko. 2009. Processing the not-because ambiguity in English: The role of pragmatics and prosody. Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 1998. Scope inversion under the rise-fall contour in German. Linguistic Inquiry 29.1, 75112.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert Jr. 1980. Structure of intonational meaning: Evidence from English. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert Jr. 1986/2008. Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lehiste, Ilse. 1973. Phonetic disambiguation of syntactic ambiguity. Glossa: An International Journal of Linguistics 7.2, 107122.Google Scholar
Lehiste, Ilse, Olive, Joseph P. & Streeter, Lynn A.. 1976. Role of duration in disambiguating syntactically ambiguous sentences. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 60.5, 11991202.Google Scholar
Liberman, Mark & Sag, Ivan A.. 1974. Prosodic form and discourse function. In LaGaly, Michael W., Fox, Robert A. & Bruck, Anthony (eds.), Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS) 10, 416427. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Lidz, Jeffrey & Musolino, Julien. 2002. Children's command of quantification. Cognition 84.2, 113154.Google Scholar
Lidz, Jeffrey & Musolino, Julien. 2005. On the status of quantificational indefinites: The view from child language. Language Acquisition 13.2, 73102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macmillan, Neil A. & Creelman, C. Douglas. 2005. Detection theory: A user's guide. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Maratsos, Michael. 1973. The effects of stress on the understanding of pronominal co-reference in children. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2.1, 18.Google Scholar
Martí, Luisa. 2001. Intonation, scope, and restrictions on quantifiers. In Megerdoomian, Karine & Bar-el, Leora Anne (eds.), West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 20, 372385. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
McMahon, Erin, Lidz, Jeffrey & Pierrehumbert, Janet. 2004. Suprasegmental cues to meaning in child-directed speech. Presented at the 17th CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, College Park, MD.Google Scholar
Miller, Karen, Schmitt, Cristina, Chang, Hsiang-Hua & Munn, Alan. 2005. Young children understand some implicatures. In Brugos, Alejna, Clark-Cotton, Manuella R. & Ha, Seungwan (eds.), Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) 29.2, 389400. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Musolino, Julien. 1998. Universal Grammar and the acquisition of semantic knowledge: An experimental investigation into the acquisition of quantifier–negation interaction in English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Musolino, Julien. 2011. Studying language acquisition through the prism of isomorphism. In de Villiers, Jill & Roeper, Tom (eds.), Handbook of generative approaches to language acquisition, 319349. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.Google Scholar
Musolino, Julien & Lidz, Jeffrey. 2006. Why children aren't universally successful with quantification. Linguistics 44.4, 817852.Google Scholar
Nagel, H. Nicholas, Shapiro, Lewis P. & Nawy, Rebecca. 1994. Prosody and the processing of filler–gap sentences. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 23.6, 473485.Google Scholar
Nagel, H. Nicholas, Shapiro, Lewis P., Tuller, Betty & Nawy, Rebecca. 1996. Prosodic influences on the resolution of temporary ambiguity during on-line sentence processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 25.2, 319344.Google Scholar
Price, Patti J., Ostendorf, Mari, Shattuck-Hufnagel, Stefanie & Fong, Cynthia. 1991. The use of prosody in syntactic disambiguation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 90.6, 29562970.Google Scholar
Roberts, Craige. 1996. Information structure: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. In Yoon, Jae Hak & Kathol, Andreas (eds.), Papers in Semantics (Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 49), 91136. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Roland, Douglas, Yun, Hongoak, Koenig, Jean-Pierre & Mauner, Gail. 2012. Semantic similarity, predictability, and models of sentence processing. Cognition 122.3, 267279.Google Scholar
Sauerland, Uli & Bott, Oliver. 2002. Prosody and scope in German inverse linking constructions. In Bel, & Marlien, (eds.), 623628.Google Scholar
Schäfer, Martin. 2004. Manner adverbs and scope. In Steube, Anita (ed.), Grammatik und Kontext: Zur Interaktion von Syntax, Semantik und Prosodie bei der Informationsstrukturierung (Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 81), 3351. Leipzig: Institut für Linuistik Universität.Google Scholar
Snedeker, Jesse & Yuan, Sylvia. 2008. Effects of prosodic and lexical constraints on parsing in young children (and adults). Journal of Memory and Language 58.2, 574608.Google Scholar
Speer, Shari R., Crowder, Robert G. & Thomas, Lisa M.. 1993. Prosodic structure and sentence recognition. Journal of Memory and Language 32.3, 336358.Google Scholar
Syrett, Kristen. 2010. The representation and processing of measure phrases by four-year-olds. In Franich, Katie, Iserman, Kate & Keil, Lauren L. (eds.), Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) 34, 421432. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Syrett, Kristen & Kawahara, Shigeto. Production and perception of listener-oriented clear speech in child language. Journal of Child Language, doi:10.1017/S0305000913000482. Published online by Cambridge University Press, 14 November 2013.Google Scholar
Syrett, Kristen, Simon, Georgia & Nisula, Kirsten. To appear. Prosodic disambiguation of scopally ambiguous sentences. North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 43.Google Scholar
Viau, Joshua, Lidz, Jeffrey & Musolino, Julien. 2010. Priming of abstract logical representations in 4-year-olds. Language Acquisition 17.1, 2650.Google Scholar
Ward, Gregory & Hirschberg, Julia. 1985. Implicating uncertainty: The pragmatics of Fall-Rise intonation. Language 61.4, 747776.Google Scholar