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Semantically-independent but contextually-dependent interpretation of contrastive accent

Semantically-independent but contextually-dependent interpretation of contrastive accent. Kiwako Ito & Shari R. Speer Ohio State University. Contrast. Similarities and differences  comparisons Bolinger (1961)

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Semantically-independent but contextually-dependent interpretation of contrastive accent

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  1. Semantically-independent but contextually-dependent interpretation of contrastive accent Kiwako Ito & Shari R. Speer Ohio State University

  2. Contrast • Similarities and differences  comparisons Bolinger (1961) “…cases where one or more individual items are singled out from a larger (but limited) set as being true regards some relationship whereas others in the same set are untrue…” Zeevat (2004) Contrastors (alternatives)… “must be obtainable from the actual utterance by substituting something else for the intonationally prominent constituent.”

  3. Contrast • Discourse coherence prerequisite for anaphorization • Must be in focus domain • Often accompanied by structural parallelism • Matter of degree?

  4. Accentuation for expressing contrast • B (vs. A) accent (Bolinger, 1961; Jackendoff, 1972) • L+H* (vs. H*) (Pierrehumbert, 1980; ToBI) • Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg (1990) “the accented item -and not some alternative related item- should be mutually believed (p296.)” • L+H*: +AGREED, theme accent (Steedman, 2003)

  5. Effect of contrastive accent on sentence/discourse processing • Faster comprehension of short discourse when contrastive accent was placed in appropriate than in inappropriate locations in a previous negation. (Bock & Mazella, 1983) • Faster phoneme monitoring when the contrastive entity was negated with prominent accent in the context than it was not. (Davidson, 2001). • Faster comprehension and higher acceptance of Q-A pairs (Birch & Clifton, 1995; Ito, 2002).

  6. Effect of contrastive accent: past eye-tracking studies • Non-anaphoric interpretation of prominent accent vs. anaphoric interpretation of lack of accent: “Click on the candle. Now, click on the CAN/can…” CAN…  looks to candy can… looks to candle (Dahan et al. 2002)

  7. Past studies cont’d: Evidence from 3 languages • Facilitative anticipatory fixations due to prosodic prominence • German: lila SHERE  ROTE shere ‘purple scissors’ ‘RED scissors’ (Weber et al.2006) • English: blue drumGREEN drum (Ito & Speer, 2008) • Japanese: pinku-no neko  MIDORI-no neko ‘pink cat’ ‘GREEN cat’ (Ito et al., under review)

  8. Eye tracking studies: cont’d • Prosodic garden-path effect • German: lila SHERE  ROTE vase ‘purple scissors’ ‘red vase’ • English: red onion GREEN drum • Japanese: murasaki-no usagi ORENJI-no saru ‘purple bunny’ ‘orange monkey’

  9. Contrast in discourse environment • Intersective adjectives: e.g., colors context/comparison-independent attributes of referents e.g., orange chair, blue car, red cap, green jacket • Subsective adjectives: e.g., sizes context/comparison-dependent attributes of referents e.g., high table, big ball, small bag, long string

  10. Effect of contrast-evoking accentual prominence: Additive or Complementary? Are the context-dependent size adjectives interpreted with stronger notion of contrast than the context-independent color adjectives? If so, does prominent accent lead to additive/facilitative effect (i.e., faster fixations to the contrastive referent) for size adjectives or does it complementarily assist the detection of contrastive referent for color adjectives?

  11. EXPERIMENTS • Holiday tree decoration task • Experiment 1: Color-sorted ornaments • Experiment 2: Size-sorted ornaments

  12. EXPERIMENTS: Procedures • ASL Eye-Trac 6000 • Sampling rate: 60Hz

  13. Conditions • Contrastive sequence: Exp 1: Hang a red star.  Hang a YELLOW/yellow star. L+H* H* Exp 2: Hang a medium star.  Hang a LARGE/large star. L+H* H*

  14. Conditions • Non-contrastive sequence: Exp 1: Hang a yellow tree.  Hang a GREEN/green ball. L+H* H* Exp 2: Hang a medium tree.  Hang a LARGE/large ball. L+H* H*

  15. Auditory Stimuli: H* vs. L+H*

  16. Auditory stimuli: Duration & F0 (Exp 1)

  17. Auditory stimuli: Duration & F0 (Exp 2)

  18. Results: Facilitative effect of L+H* Exp1:red star  YELLOW star Exp2: medium tree  LARGE tree

  19. Results: misleading effect of L+H* Exp1: red tree GREEN ball. Exp2: medium tree  LARGE ball.

  20. Results: with H* Exp1: red tree green ball. Exp2: medium tree  large ball.

  21. Garden path Effect: L+H* vs. H* fixations to green tree fixations to large tree

  22. Summary: Fixation proportion • L+H* facilitates eyemovements to the targets for bothcolor and size adjectives in contrastive sequences. • Visually more complex size-sorted boards led to slower eye movements to the target than color-sorted boards. • L+H* led to more frequent fixations to the incorrect targets for bothcolor and size adjectives in non-contrastive sequences. • Non-prominent size adjective (with H*) did not lead to looks to contrastive cells, i.e., size adjectives are not automatically interpreted contrastively.

  23. Issue on categorical distinction:Is L+H* a kind of H*? • Color adj with H*  weaker interpretation of contrast? • Categorical interpretation but non-categorical perception (Ladd & Morton, 1997) • Great overlap between H* and L+H* in pitch scale, shape & alignment (Tayler, 2000) • Frequent uncertainty between H* and L+H* in expert-ToBI labeling (Brugos et al. 2008). • More frequent use of H* than L+H* to mention contrastive discourse entities in story continuation (Metusalem & Ito, 2008; TIE3 poster). • How can we define categories of prosodic prominence? • What factors contribute to recognition & processing of contrastiveness?

  24. Gradient phonetics and intermediate responses • English: /t/ vs. /d/ (Kong, in progress/2008)

  25. Kong (2008) cont’d: intermediate productions

  26. Kong (2008): intermediate perception

  27. Multiple phonetic/non-phonetic factors predicting 1st fixation latency? • Absolute F0 peak height for Adj • F0 peak latency (from stressed syllable onset) • Adj Duration • Difference in F0 peak height green tree YELLOW/yellow tree. ********************************* • Subject, color, size

  28. Step-wise Multiple Linear Regressions:Predicting First fixation latency: L+H* EXP1: Color-sorted EXP2: Size-sorted Total R2: .051 F(2,256) = 7.96, p<.001 Total R2: .245 F(2,296) = 25.38, p<.0001

  29. Step-wise Multiple Regressions:Predicting First fixation latency: H* EXP1: Color-sorted EXP2: Size-sorted Total R2: .108 F(3,257) = 11.59, p<.0001 Total R2: .088 F(3,293) = 10.57, p<.0001

  30. Further exploration needed: • Different dependent variable? • Normalized F0 scaling • Peak alignment from vowel onset • Word/syllable intensity • Vowel quality (F1, F2, breathiness, etc.) • Following noun’s phonetic status • F0 prominence • intensity • vowel quality, etc.

  31. Acknowledgments: • Laurie Maynell • Ping Bai • Ross Metusalem • NSF: BCS-0617609 • NIH: R01 DC007090-01A2

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