This paper explores whether information- and confirmationseeking questions are marked intonationally in Majorcan Catalan by means of three different perception tests (a congruity test, a rating test and a test based on the classical CP paradigm). The results show that a difference in pitch scaling on the leading H tone of the H+L* nuclear pitch accent is the main cue used by Majorcan listeners to identify confirmatory questions. Thus, while a ¡H+L* pitch accent signals an information-seeking question (i.e., the speaker has no expectation about the nature of the answer), H+L* pitch accent indicates that the speaker is asking about mutually shared information.
Index Terms: information-seeking questions, confirmationseeking questions, tonal perception, tonal scaling, Catalan language.
Cite as: Vanrell, M.d.M., Mascaró, I., Torres-Tamarit, F., Prieto, P. (2010) When intonation plays the main character: information- vs. confirmation-seeking questions in Majorcan Catalan. Proc. Speech Prosody 2010, paper 168
@inproceedings{vanrell10b_speechprosody, author={Maria del Mar Vanrell and Ignasi Mascaró and Francesc Torres-Tamarit and Pilar Prieto}, title={{When intonation plays the main character: information- vs. confirmation-seeking questions in Majorcan Catalan}}, year=2010, booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2010}, pages={paper 168} }