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The prosody of rhetorical questions in English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2019

NICOLE DEHÉ  and
BETTINA BRAUN
NICOLE DEHÉ
Affiliation:
Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Konstanz, Fach 186, 78457 Konstanz, Germany, nicole.dehe@uni-konstanz.de, bettina.braun@uni-konstanz.de
BETTINA BRAUN
Affiliation:
Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Konstanz, Fach 186, 78457 Konstanz, Germany, nicole.dehe@uni-konstanz.de, bettina.braun@uni-konstanz.de
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Abstract

This article contributes to our knowledge about the prosodic realisation of rhetorical questions (RQs) as compared to information-seeking questions (ISQs). It reports on a production experiment testing the prosody of English wh- and polar RQs and ISQs in a Canadian variety. In previous literature, the contribution of prosody to the distinction between the two illocution types has often been limited to the intonational realisation of the terminus of the utterance, i.e. whether it ends in a rise or a fall. Along with edge tones, we tested other phonological and phonetic parameters. Our results are as follows: (i) The intonational terminus was distinctive only for polar questions (rise vs plateau), not for wh-questions (low throughout). (ii) Moreover, the semantic difference between RQs and ISQs is signalled by pitch accents. It is reflected in nuclear pitch accent type for wh-questions, and accent type and position for polar questions. (iii) Phonetically, RQs are produced with longer constituent durations and – for wh-questions – a softer voice quality in the wh-word. Taken together, several intonational categories and phonetic parameters contribute to the distinction between RQs and ISQs. A simple distinction between rising and falling intonation is in any case insufficient.

Keywords

rhetorical questionsprosodyquestion intonationillocution typequestion type
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 607 - 635
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

We thank Angela James, Stephanie Gustedt and Clara Huttenlauch for help with the construction of the materials and data annotation, Anja Arnhold for data collection, and María Biezma for discussion. The research presented here was funded by the DFG as part of research unit ‘Questions at the Interfaces’ (FOR 2111, project P6), grant numbers DE 876/3-1 and BR 3428/4-1.

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