Prosodic Prominence in Polar Questions and Exclamatives

Abstract

This study investigates prosodic prominence in string-identical verb-first exclamatives and questions in German. It presents results from three production experiments comparing polar exclamatives/questions with different finite verbs [auxiliary, lexical verb (unergative)] and/or subjects (d-pronoun, full phrase) in order to explore the prominence-lending characteristics of various lexical, syntactic and semantic factors, which seem to be relevant for prosodic prominence in exclamations but not in other speech acts. The results show that clause-initial finite verbs are accented much more often in exclamatives than in questions, indicating that the C-position is an attractor for prosodic prominence in exclamatives. Furthermore, d-pronouns are accented very frequently in exclamatives but virtually never in polar questions. Given full subjects are also accented more often in exclamatives than in questions. With respect to verb type, the findings show that finite auxiliaries are only accented in exclamatives, but that lexical verbs are also accented in questions. Thus, the lexical verbs tested in this study may carry an accent irrespective of clause-initial or clause-final position and independently of speech act. While some of the findings can be explained by semantic-pragmatic factors, not all of them can. We suggest that exclamations have a prosodic constructional default, which is determined by the speech act type: it comprises a requirement for the accentuation of certain elements in the clause, a low speaking rate and a reduced sensitivity to information-structural requirements for low prosodic prominence.