Semantically-independent but contextually-dependent interpretation

of contrastive accent

Kiwako Ito & Shari R. Speer

Ohio State University

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.”

Contrast

Discourse coherence

prerequisite for anaphorization Must be in focus domainOften accompanied by structural

parallelism

Matter of degree?

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)

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).

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 candycan… looks to candle

(Dahan et al. 2002)

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)

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’

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

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?

EXPERIMENTSHoliday tree decoration taskExperiment 1: Color-sorted ornamentsExperiment 2: Size-sorted ornaments

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

ConditionsContrastive 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*

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*

Auditory Stimuli: H* vs. L+H*

hang a yellow star

L+H* L–L

1 0 1 4

Time (s)1.68816 2.93653

hang a yellow star

H* !H* L–L

1– 0 1 4

Time (s)2.23213 3.61295

hang a large star

L+H* L–L

1 0 1 4

Time (s)1.69701 3.13143

hang a large star

H* !H* L–L

1 0 0 4

Time (s)2.60278 4.12306

Auditory stimuli: Duration & F0 (Exp 1)Conditions Adj Noun

Dur(ms) F0 Dur(ms) F0

Cont

[L+H* no-acc]330

299

(21)489

148 (6)

Cont

[H* !H*]332

207 (7)

549164 (7)

Non-cont

[L+H* no-acc]320

300 (22)

491150 (5)

Non-cont

[H* !H*]316

208

(6)558

163 (4)

Auditory stimuli: Duration & F0 (Exp 2)Conditions Adj Noun

Dur(ms) F0 Dur(ms) F0

Cont

[L+H* no-acc]483

289 (31)

493145 (4)

Cont

[H* !H*]484

213

(8)570

167

(4)

Non-cont

[L+H* no-acc]480

283

(30)512

148

(3)

Non-cont

[H* !H*]480

214

(8)578

166

(3)

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

Results: misleading effect of L+H*

Exp1: red tree GREEN ball. Exp2: medium tree LARGE ball.

Results: with H*

Exp1: red tree green ball. Exp2: medium tree large ball.

Garden path Effect: L+H* vs. H*

fixations to green tree fixations to large tree

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Summary: Fixation proportion L+H* facilitates eyemovements to the targets for

both color 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 both color 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.

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).

1. How can we define categories of prosodic prominence?2. What factors contribute to recognition & processing of

contrastiveness?

Gradient phonetics and intermediate responsesEnglish: /t/ vs. /d/ (Kong, in progress/2008)

Kong (2008) cont’d: intermediate productions

Kong (2008): intermediate perception

Multiple phonetic/non-phonetic factors predicting 1st fixation latency? Absolute F0 peak height for AdjF0 peak latency (from stressed syllable onset)Adj DurationDifference in F0 peak height

green tree YELLOW/yellow tree.

*********************************Subject, color, size

Step-wise Multiple Linear Regressions:Predicting First fixation latency: L+H*

Step Var t p

1 subject -2.91 <.01

2 F0 diff -2.76 <.01

Total R2: .051

F(2,256) = 7.96, p<.001

Step Var t p

1 F0 diff -5.66 <.001

2 F0 peak 4.44 <.001

3 color -2.57 <.05

4 size 2.53 <.05

Total R2: .245

F(2,296) = 25.38, p<.0001

EXP1: Color-sorted EXP2: Size-sorted

Step-wise Multiple Regressions:Predicting First fixation latency: H*

Step Var t p

1 size -4.78 <.0001

2 color 4.03 <.0001

3 subject -2.97 <.01

Total R2: .108

F(3,257) = 11.59, p<.0001

Step Var t p

1 size -2.44 <.05

2 F0 diff -3.21 <.01

3 color -2.64 <.01

Total R2: .088

F(3,293) = 10.57, p<.0001

EXP1: Color-sorted EXP2: Size-sorted

Further exploration needed:

Different dependent variable?Normalized F0 scalingPeak alignment from vowel onsetWord/syllable intensityVowel quality (F1, F2, breathiness, etc.)Following noun’s phonetic status

F0 prominence intensity vowel quality, etc.

Acknowledgments:

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