Little has been said about the role of prosody as a marker of evidentiality and epistemicity. Whereas evidentiality refers to the marking of the source of information in a proposition, epistemicity refers to the expression of a speaker’s certainty about the truth value of his/her proposition (De Haan 2001). Crosslinguistically, evidentiality and epistemicity can be marked through different linguistic strategies. For example, evidential markers can be instantiated either morphologically (e.g., díiga apé-wi ‘I played football (I saw it)’ in Tuyuca: Papafragou et al. 2007) or lexically (Cruschina & Remberger 2008). On the other hand, epistemicity has been reported to be marked lexically (e.g., That would be my roommate in English: Gravano et al. 2008) and also prosodically through the use of distinct intonation contours (Vanrell et al. 2010). Typologically, Sardinian constitutes a good test case to investigate the expression of evidentiality and epistemicity in yes-no questions, which can be expressed in a number of ways. For example, they can present a special intonation as in (1) or word order changes as in (2), or they can be headed by the particle a or nachi (na(rat) chi, ‘s/he says that’), see (3) and (4): (1) Mandarinu, a che nd’at?¡H+L* L% ‘Do you have tangerines?’ vs. Nachi benis a mandigare?H+L* L% ‘Are you coming to eat (I suppose so)?’ vs. Sa una est? ¡H*+L L% ‘Is it one o’clock? ’ (Vanrell et al. 2011). (2) Mandicatu as? ‘Have you eaten?’ (Remberger 2010). (3) A benis a jocare chin mecus? ‘Are you coming to play with me?’ (Jones 1993). (4) Nachi benis a mandigare? ‘Are you coming to eat (I suppose so)?’ (Vanrell et al. 2011). The goal of this research is to test experimentally how prosody interacts with lexicosyntactic structure in conveying evidentiality and epistemicity. The preliminary corpus analyzed was obtained by means of the Discourse Completion Test methodology (Nurani 2009), using a prompted response questionnaire. Following Sudo’s (to appear) proposal, we created a set of situations which contained different combinations of evidential and epistemic conditions (e.g., ‘It’s time for lunch and your daughter arrives home. You know that she does not eat a lot, but today she seems to be hungry. Ask her whether she is hungry’). For instance, this specific situation was evidentially biased for a positive answer to the question and epistemically biased for a negative answer. 11 female speakers of Logudorese Sardinian participated in this experiment. We elicited a total of 26 situations x 11 speakers, yielding a total of 286 utterances. For the work presented here, the data from 3 speakers were annotated in terms of prosody and use of lexical and syntactic markers. The preliminary results clearly confirm that unbiased yes-no questions are systematically headed by the particle a and also characterized by the upstepped falling nuclear accent ¡H+L* L% (84% of the time) (Fig. 1). By contrast, biased yes-no questions (be it epistemically or evidentially) present fronted constituents (87%) and the rising-falling H*+L L% intonational pattern (83%) (Fig. 2). However, when the bias leads to a negative answer, it can also be marked by means of negation (47%), which is incompatible with fronting, and rising-falling contours (62%) (Fig. 3). In addition, differences concerning the nature of the bias, evidential or epistemic, are found. All in all, the results suggest that there is an important correlation between the syntactic/lexical form chosen and the intonational contour choice. It is thus clear that prosodic markers of epistemicity and evidentiality in questions have to be studied hand in hand with their lexicosyntactic properties. The innovation of this work lies in including two different types of bias in yes-no questions, evidential and epistemic, and in considering that these biases can also be grammatically encoded in prosody. Figure 1: Waveform and f0 contour of the utterance De tumatas, a nd’as? (‘Do you have tomatoes?’). Figure 2: Waveform and f0 contour of the utterance Ma cuddu líberu est, custu pacu?(‘But is that the book?’). Figure 3: Waveform and f0 contour of the utterance E tando no nd’endides pius, de ‘irdura? (‘So you are not going to sell vegetables anymore?’). References Cruschina, S., Remberger, E.-M. 2008. Hearsay and reported speech. Evidentiality in Romance. In Benincà, P., Damonte, F., Penello, N. (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 34th Incontro di Grammatica Generativa. Padova: Unipress (Special issue Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, vol. 33), 95-116. De Haan, F. 2001. The relation between modality and evidentiality. In Müller, R., Reis, M. (eds.), Modalität und Modalverben im Deutschen. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 9. Hamburg: H. Buske, 201-216. Gravano, A., Benus, S., Hirschberg, J., Sneed German, E., Ward, G. 2008. The effect of contour type and epistemic modality on the assessment of speaker certainty. In Barbosa, P. A., Madureira, S., Reis, C. (eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2008. Campinas: ISCA Archive, 401-404. Jones, M. A. 1993. Sintassi della lingua sarda. Cagliari: Condaghes. Nurani, L. M. 2009. Methodological issue in pragmatic research: is discourse completion test a reliable data collection instrument?. Jurnal Sosioteknologi Edisi 17 Tahun 8, 667-678. Papafragou, A., Li, P., Choi, Y., Han, Ch. 2007. Evidentiality in language and cognition. Cognition 103, 253-299. Remberger, E.-M. 2010. Left-peripheral interactions in Sardinian. Lingua 120, 555-581. Sudo, Y. To appear. Biased polar questions in English and Japanese. In: Gutzman, D., Gärtner, H. M. (eds.), Expressives and Other Kinds of Non-truth-conditional meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vanrell, M. M., Mascaró, I., Torres-Tamarit, F., Prieto, P. 2010. When intonation plays the main character: information- vs. confirmation-seeking questions in Majorcan Catalan. Proceedings Speech Prosody 2010 100168: 1-4, ISBN: 978-0-557-51931-6. <http://speechprosody2010.illinois.edu/papers/100168.pdf> (5 November 2011). Vanrell, M.M., Schirru, C., Ballone, F., Prieto, P. 2011. Sard_ToBI. Paper presented at Workshop on Romance ToBI. <http://prosodia.upf.edu/activitats/wromtobi/home/program.php> (5 November 2011).
Prosodic evidential and epistemic markers in Sardinian yes-no questions / Ballone, F.; Vanrell, M. M.; Schirru, Carlo Giorgio; Prieto, P.. - (2012). (Intervento presentato al convegno Laboratory Approaches to Romance Phonology tenutosi a Mexico City nel 03-05 Oct-2012).
Prosodic evidential and epistemic markers in Sardinian yes-no questions
SCHIRRU, Carlo Giorgio;
2012-01-01
Abstract
Little has been said about the role of prosody as a marker of evidentiality and epistemicity. Whereas evidentiality refers to the marking of the source of information in a proposition, epistemicity refers to the expression of a speaker’s certainty about the truth value of his/her proposition (De Haan 2001). Crosslinguistically, evidentiality and epistemicity can be marked through different linguistic strategies. For example, evidential markers can be instantiated either morphologically (e.g., díiga apé-wi ‘I played football (I saw it)’ in Tuyuca: Papafragou et al. 2007) or lexically (Cruschina & Remberger 2008). On the other hand, epistemicity has been reported to be marked lexically (e.g., That would be my roommate in English: Gravano et al. 2008) and also prosodically through the use of distinct intonation contours (Vanrell et al. 2010). Typologically, Sardinian constitutes a good test case to investigate the expression of evidentiality and epistemicity in yes-no questions, which can be expressed in a number of ways. For example, they can present a special intonation as in (1) or word order changes as in (2), or they can be headed by the particle a or nachi (na(rat) chi, ‘s/he says that’), see (3) and (4): (1) Mandarinu, a che nd’at?¡H+L* L% ‘Do you have tangerines?’ vs. Nachi benis a mandigare?H+L* L% ‘Are you coming to eat (I suppose so)?’ vs. Sa una est? ¡H*+L L% ‘Is it one o’clock? ’ (Vanrell et al. 2011). (2) Mandicatu as? ‘Have you eaten?’ (Remberger 2010). (3) A benis a jocare chin mecus? ‘Are you coming to play with me?’ (Jones 1993). (4) Nachi benis a mandigare? ‘Are you coming to eat (I suppose so)?’ (Vanrell et al. 2011). The goal of this research is to test experimentally how prosody interacts with lexicosyntactic structure in conveying evidentiality and epistemicity. The preliminary corpus analyzed was obtained by means of the Discourse Completion Test methodology (Nurani 2009), using a prompted response questionnaire. Following Sudo’s (to appear) proposal, we created a set of situations which contained different combinations of evidential and epistemic conditions (e.g., ‘It’s time for lunch and your daughter arrives home. You know that she does not eat a lot, but today she seems to be hungry. Ask her whether she is hungry’). For instance, this specific situation was evidentially biased for a positive answer to the question and epistemically biased for a negative answer. 11 female speakers of Logudorese Sardinian participated in this experiment. We elicited a total of 26 situations x 11 speakers, yielding a total of 286 utterances. For the work presented here, the data from 3 speakers were annotated in terms of prosody and use of lexical and syntactic markers. The preliminary results clearly confirm that unbiased yes-no questions are systematically headed by the particle a and also characterized by the upstepped falling nuclear accent ¡H+L* L% (84% of the time) (Fig. 1). By contrast, biased yes-no questions (be it epistemically or evidentially) present fronted constituents (87%) and the rising-falling H*+L L% intonational pattern (83%) (Fig. 2). However, when the bias leads to a negative answer, it can also be marked by means of negation (47%), which is incompatible with fronting, and rising-falling contours (62%) (Fig. 3). In addition, differences concerning the nature of the bias, evidential or epistemic, are found. All in all, the results suggest that there is an important correlation between the syntactic/lexical form chosen and the intonational contour choice. It is thus clear that prosodic markers of epistemicity and evidentiality in questions have to be studied hand in hand with their lexicosyntactic properties. The innovation of this work lies in including two different types of bias in yes-no questions, evidential and epistemic, and in considering that these biases can also be grammatically encoded in prosody. Figure 1: Waveform and f0 contour of the utterance De tumatas, a nd’as? (‘Do you have tomatoes?’). Figure 2: Waveform and f0 contour of the utterance Ma cuddu líberu est, custu pacu?(‘But is that the book?’). Figure 3: Waveform and f0 contour of the utterance E tando no nd’endides pius, de ‘irdura? (‘So you are not going to sell vegetables anymore?’). References Cruschina, S., Remberger, E.-M. 2008. Hearsay and reported speech. Evidentiality in Romance. In Benincà, P., Damonte, F., Penello, N. (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 34th Incontro di Grammatica Generativa. Padova: Unipress (Special issue Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, vol. 33), 95-116. De Haan, F. 2001. The relation between modality and evidentiality. In Müller, R., Reis, M. (eds.), Modalität und Modalverben im Deutschen. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 9. Hamburg: H. Buske, 201-216. Gravano, A., Benus, S., Hirschberg, J., Sneed German, E., Ward, G. 2008. The effect of contour type and epistemic modality on the assessment of speaker certainty. In Barbosa, P. A., Madureira, S., Reis, C. (eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2008. Campinas: ISCA Archive, 401-404. Jones, M. A. 1993. Sintassi della lingua sarda. Cagliari: Condaghes. Nurani, L. M. 2009. Methodological issue in pragmatic research: is discourse completion test a reliable data collection instrument?. Jurnal Sosioteknologi Edisi 17 Tahun 8, 667-678. Papafragou, A., Li, P., Choi, Y., Han, Ch. 2007. Evidentiality in language and cognition. Cognition 103, 253-299. Remberger, E.-M. 2010. Left-peripheral interactions in Sardinian. Lingua 120, 555-581. Sudo, Y. To appear. Biased polar questions in English and Japanese. In: Gutzman, D., Gärtner, H. M. (eds.), Expressives and Other Kinds of Non-truth-conditional meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vanrell, M. M., Mascaró, I., Torres-Tamarit, F., Prieto, P. 2010. When intonation plays the main character: information- vs. confirmation-seeking questions in Majorcan Catalan. Proceedings Speech Prosody 2010 100168: 1-4, ISBN: 978-0-557-51931-6.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
