On the intonation in German intonation questions: The role of the prenuclear region
Résumé
German questions and statements can be distinguished not only by lexical and syntactic, but also by intonational means. The present study revisits, how questions are signalled intonationally in utterances that have neither lexical nor syntactical cues. Starting from natural productions of such 'intonation questions', two perception experiments were run based on the semantic-differential and on the indirect-identification test paradigms. Replicating recent findings from Italian, our results show that interpreting an utterance as a statement or an intonation question is not restricted to the intonational nucleus. Rather, listeners can also refer to shape, slope, and alignment differences of the preceding prenuclear pitch accent to judge whether the utterance is or is not a statement. Thus utterances with a finally falling nuclear pitch-accent contour can also trigger question perception. An utterance-final rise is not mandatory. These findings are in line with production and perception studies suggesting that the utterance-final rise-fall contrast is not directly related to sentence modality, but represents a separate attitudinal meaning dimension. Moreover, the findings support that both prenuclear and nuclear F0 patterns must be taken into account in the analysis of tune meaning.