Abstract
The paper reports experimental results on the intonation of wh- and yes/no-questions in Tokyo Japanese, and discusses several implications for the semantic and phonological theories of focus. The intonation of declarative sentences, wh-questions, and yes/no-questions are systematically compared. The results show that the wh-question exhibits an \(\text {F}_0\)-prominence on the wh-phrase, while the yes/no-question exhibits an \(\text {F}_0\)-prominence on the verb. It is claimed that these prominences are both focus-oriented. This proposal fits the standard semantic theory of questions (Hamblin 1973) nicely. Phonological theories of focus prosody in Tokyo Japanese are compared in the light of the results. The interaction of the notions of focus and discourse-newness/givenness is also discussed.
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- 1.
In this paper, we exclusively discuss Tokyo Japanese. For brevity, it will be referred to simply as “Japanese” hereafter.
- 2.
Here we adopt the definition of focus by (Krifka 2008: 247), which states that focus “indicates the presence of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of linguistic expressions”.
- 3.
Japanese lexical items are categorized as either accented words or unaccented words. Only accented words exhibit an \(\text {F}_0\)-peak followed by a sharp fall, as shown in this example. For \(\text {F}_0\)-realization of unaccented words, see Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988). For expository purposes, the examples used in this paper are composed of only accented words, unless noted otherwise. Lexical pitch accents are indicated by acute accents (\(^\prime \)).
- 4.
Maekawa (1991b) reports that there was no significant \(\text {F}_0\)-rise on the wh-phrase, while the post-focal reduction was consistently observed. These results, however, appear to have been collected from a single speaker.
- 5.
In addition to the two phenomena described here, there is actually another difference between WHQs and DECLs, which is not clearly visible in the pitch track in Fig. 2 due to the nonoptimal quality of the pitch tracks. That is a rising intonation at the end of the question. As clearly shown in Figs. 3 and 4, this rising intonation is a property of both question types (WHQ and YNQ). See Sect. 3.3 below for more explanation.
- 6.
This terminology is originally introduced by Sugahara (2003).
- 7.
Words used in the stimuli were all accented.
- 8.
In Japanese, the question particle is optional in the matrix clause (Yoshida and Yoshida 1996). In such a case, the question is only marked by the utterance-final rising intonation.
- 9.
This phrase has been referred to as either Major Phrase (Poser 1984; Kubozono 1993) or intermediate phrase (Pierrehumbert and Beckman 1988), in contrast to Minor Phrase or accentual phrase, respectively. However, Itô and Mester (2007, 2012) point out both conceptual and empirical problems of this distinction between the two levels of prosodic phrasing, and claim that this distinction is superfluous and can be dispensed with. Although the details of their account are not our concern here, we adopt Ito and Mester’s (2007; 2012) framework, and hence use the general term p-phrase. See Itô and Mester (2007, 2012) for more discussion.
- 10.
- 11.
This compression of the \(\text {F}_0\)-peak does not mean that lexical pitch accents are completely ‘deaccented’ or ‘eradicated’ in the post-focal domain, as sometimes (either explicitly or tacitly) assumed in the literature (Pierrehumbert and Beckman 1988; Deguchi and Kitagawa 2002). There is abundant evidence showing that lexical pitch accents are only less visible in the post-focal domain due to compression of the pitch range. See Maekawa (1994) and Sugahara (2003) for discussion.
- 12.
If the variances of two samples are not equal, Welch’s correction is made on the t-test.
- 13.
Both contrasts were statistically significant in all 12 subjects’ individual data as well.
- 14.
Just for expository purposes, verum focus will be distinguished with the subscript ‘VF’ (\(_\mathrm {VF}\)), in contrast to other foci, which are marked by the subscript ‘F’ (\(_\mathrm {F}\)). This does not mean that verum focus will be treated differently from other foci in terms of semantic or phonological computation.
- 15.
Nor does focus delete p-phrase boundaries in the post-focal domain, contrary to the claim made in the ‘rephrasing’ analysis. See Ishihara (2011) for discussion.
- 16.
- 17.
For the effect of givenness in the post-focal domain, see Sugahara (2003).
- 18.
As an anonymous reviewer correctly points out, however, this interpretation of the results is incompatible with the standard analysis of the Question–Answer congruence (Rooth 1992). The issue seems not as simple as outlined here.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Caroline Féry, Andreas Haida, and an anonymous reviewer, as well as the audience at the Information Structure Workshop at the CIL18 Conference, for their comments and discussion. Thanks also go to Felix Engelmann and Juliane Böhme for their help on data annotation and analysis. All the remaining errors are mine.
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Ishihara, S. (2017). The Intonation of Wh- and Yes/No-Questions in Tokyo Japanese. In: Lee, C., Kiefer, F., Krifka, M. (eds) Contrastiveness in Information Structure, Alternatives and Scalar Implicatures. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 91. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10106-4_19
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