Year: 2000
Type: article
Abstract: These experiments were designed to discover whether untrained speakers produce prosodic cues that are sufficient to allow listeners to interpret ambiguous PP-attachments.A referential communication task was used to elicit productions of ambiguous sentences and determine whether listeners could use prosodic cues to correctly interpret these ambiguities in context.In Experiment 1, the referential context supported both potential interpretations of the ambiguity.Acoustic analyses indicated that Speakers produced potentially informative prosodic cues.Listeners' responses to the ambiguous sentences strongly reflected the demonstration the Speaker had seen, indicating that they were able to use this information.However, postexperiment interviews revealed that Speakers were aware of the ambiguous situations.Experiment 2 manipulated Speaker awareness by altering the Speaker's referential context to support only the intended meaning, and by making the resolution of the ambiguity a between subjects variable.Although Listeners' contexts were unchanged from Experiment 1, Listeners now showed no sensitivity to the Speakers' intended meaning.Acoustic analysis indicated that the strong prosodic cues provided in Experiment 1 were absent in Experiment 2. The experiments suggest that informative prosodic cues depend upon speakers' knowledge of the situation: speakers provide prosodic cues when needed; listeners use these prosodic cues when present.
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2114176152