Asking or Telling – Real-time Processing of Prosodically Distinguished Questions and Statements

We introduce a targeted language game approach using the visual world, eye-movement paradigm to assess when and how certain intonational contours affect the interpretation of utterances. We created a computer-based card game in which elliptical utterances such as “ Got a candy” occurred with a nuclear contour most consistent with a yes–no question (H* H-H%) or a statement (L* L-L%). In Experiment 1 we explored how such contours are integrated online. In Experiment 2 we studied the expectations listeners have for how intonational contours signal intentions: do these reflect linguistic categories or rapid adaptation to the paradigm? Prosody had an immediate effect on interpretation, as indexed by the pattern and timing of fixations. Moreover, the association between different contours and intentions was quite robust in the absence of clear syntactic cues to sentence type, and was not due to rapid adaptation. Prosody had immediate effects on interpretation even though there was a construction-based bias to interpret “ got a” as a question. Taken together, we believe this paradigm will provide further insights into how intonational contours and their phonetic realization interact with other cues to sentence type in online comprehension.