Description:

This project examines the associations between the pragmatic meaning categories of contrast (e.g., the shirt is red, not blue) and intensity (e.g., the shirt is very red) and specific realizations of prosodic prominence in Mainstream American English (MAE). Previous studies have suggested that contrast and intensity are conveyed by prominences featuring differences in pitch (high vs. low) and duration (long vs. extra long). Therefore, this project begins by asking listeners to make an inference about a speaker's intended meaning after hearing a single instance of prominence produced on a gradable adjective. The results suggest that increased duration is highly associated with an intensified meaning, while differences in pitch scaling are less clearly associated with one vs. the other. The project continues by investigating which combinations of pitch and duration serve as the strongest cues to contrast and intensity by asking listeners to select which of two prominences best conveys a single meaning category. The results from these experiments indicate that lower pitch and increased duration are preferred for both contrast and intensity, but that asymmetric lengthening of the onset is a particularly strong cue to intensity only. In the final portion of this project, I determine that asymmetric lengthening of the onset is also highly preferred as a cue to intensity targeting the attitudinal dimension, as opposed to just the semantic one. 

Overall, this project provides additional insights into listeners' associations of different realizations of prominence with the relatively understudied meaning category of intensity. Furthermore, this project contributes to the wider debate about the mapping between prominence and pragmatic meaning, suggesting that listeners do not simply pay attention to whether a word is categorically more prominent, but attend to differences in how that prominence is achieved.