The role of prosody in processing speaker commitment in French
Résumé
In French, an utterance-final fall is often associated to commitment on speaker's behalf and it is typically used in assertions. Final rises and final rise-fall-rises signal that the speaker does not commit to the proposition of the sentence. Hence, they are often used to convey incredulity. This study tested whether listeners use earlier prosodic cues as well as the final contour in the sentences to achieve a pragmatic interpretation of an utterance. Sixteen Subject-Verb-Object sentences were created, which were uttered both as assertions and incredulity questions. The sentences differed in the nuclear contour (e.g., final boundary tone) and in the prenuclear one (e.g., expanded pitch range). Twenty-two listeners matched each auditory stimulus with one of the two facial expressions, while their eye movements were monitored. Results show that, in assertions, listeners looked at the correct picture only after listening to the whole sentence. However, in incredulity questions, anticipatory fixations to the referent picture gradually increased from the beginning of the sentence. The findings suggest that the interaction between prenuclear and nuclear contours in processing speaker commitment varies across different tunes.