Nygaard, L.C., Herold, D.S., & Namy, L.L. (2009). The semantics of prosody: Acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning. Cognitive Science, 33(1), 127–146.
Presentation: Shelly
Summary: Thomas
As an attempt to blur the barrier between linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of spoken language, this study investigated whether prosodic correlates to meaning in different semantic domains could be reliably produced and perceived. In the production task, pictorial presentation of meanings from antonym pairs was used to elicit pronunciation of a given novel word. Acoustic analysis revealed that the overall valence of the meanings was reflected in the acoustic signal. Also, different antonym pairs seemed to elicit different acoustic features. The first perceptual task showed that listeners, upon hearing a novel word, could associate the word with the meaning by which the pronunciation was elicited in the production task. Yet it was possible that the results of Experiment 1 only revealed the overall valence in the acoustic signal, instead of domain-specific “semantics”. A follow-up perceptual experiment was done and the results revealed that the correspondence seemed to be domain-specific, because when a novel word for hot/cold was used to elicit responses to big/small, the meanings of the novel word were less successfully inferred than that from the same domain. The findings suggest that there are reliable and domain-specific prosodic correlates in speech.
As an attempt to blur the barrier between linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of spoken language, this study investigated whether prosodic correlates to meaning in different semantic domains could be reliably produced and perceived. In the production task, pictorial presentation of meanings from antonym pairs was used to elicit pronunciation of a given novel word. Acoustic analysis revealed that the overall valence of the meanings was reflected in the acoustic signal. Also, different antonym pairs seemed to elicit different acoustic features. The first perceptual task showed that listeners, upon hearing a novel word, could associate the word with the meaning by which the pronunciation was elicited in the production task. Yet it was possible that the results of Experiment 1 only revealed the overall valence in the acoustic signal, instead of domain-specific “semantics”. A follow-up perceptual experiment was done and the results revealed that the correspondence seemed to be domain-specific, because when a novel word for hot/cold was used to elicit responses to big/small, the meanings of the novel word were less successfully inferred than that from the same domain. The findings suggest that there are reliable and domain-specific prosodic correlates in speech.
