There is growing evidence that pitch accents as well as prosodic boundaries can affect syntactic attachment. But is this an effect of their perceptual salience (the Salience Hypothesis), or is it because accents mark the position of focus (the Focus Attraction Hypothesis)? A pair of auditory comprehension experiments shows that focus position, as indicated by preceding wh-questions instead of by pitch accents, affects attachment by drawing the ambiguous phrase to the focus. This supports the Focus Attraction Hypothesis (or a pragmatic version of salience) for both these results and previous results of accents on attachment. These experiments show that information structure, as indicated with prosody or other means, influences sentence interpretation, and suggests a view on which modifiers are drawn to the most important information in a sentence.
ArnoldJ. E. (1998). Reference form and discourse patterns. Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University.
2.
BarrD. J.LevyR.ScheepersC.TilyH. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001
3.
BatesD.MaechlerM.BolkerB.WalkerS. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
4.
BeaverD. I.ClarkB. Z. (2008). Sense and sensitivity: How focus determines meaning. Wiley-Blackwell.
BishopJ. (2012). Information structural expectations in the perception of prosodic prominence. In ElordietaG.PrietoP. (Eds.), Prosody and meaning (interface explorations) (pp. 239–270). Mouton de Gruyter.
7.
BraunB.TagliapietraL. (2010). The role of constrastive intonation contours in the retrieval of contextual alternatives. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25(7–9), 1024-1043.
8.
BrittM.PerfettiC.GarrodS.RaynerK. (1992). Parsing and discourse: Context effects and their limits. Journal of Memory and Language, 31(3), 293–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(92)90015-P
9.
CarlsonK. (2001). The effects of parallelism and prosody on the processing of gapping structures. Language and Speech, 44(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309010440010101
10.
CarlsonK. (2002). Parallelism and prosody in the processing of ellipsis sentences. Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series. Routledge.
CarlsonK.PotterD. (in press). How focus particles and accents affect attachment. Glossa.
13.
CarlsonK.TylerJ. C. (2018). Accents, not just prosodic boundaries, influence syntactic attachment. Language and Speech, 61(2), 246–276. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830917712282
14.
CarlsonK.CliftonC.Jr.FrazierL. (2001). Prosodic boundaries in adjunct attachment. Journal of Memory and Language, 45(1), 58–81. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.2000.2762
15.
CarlsonK.DickeyM. W.FrazierL.CliftonC.Jr. (2009). Information structure expectations in sentence comprehension. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(1), 114–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210701880171
16.
ChenY.LeeP. P.-L.PanH. (2016). Topic and focus marking in Chinese. In FéryC.IshiharaS. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure (pp. 733–752). Oxford University Press.
CooperW. E.Paccia-CooperJ. (1980). Syntax and speech. Harvard University Press.
19.
CutlerA. (1976). Phoneme-monitoring reaction time as a function of preceding intonation contour. Perception and Psychophysics, 20(1), 55–60. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198706
CutlerA.DahanD.van DonselaarW. (1997). Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: A literature review. Language and Speech, 40(2), 121–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383099704000203
ForakerS.McElreeB. (2007). The role of prominence in pronoun resolution: Active vs. passive representation. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(3), 357–383. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.07.004
24.
FraundorfS. H.WatsonD. G.BenjaminA. S. (2010). Recognition memory reveals how CONTRASTIVE contrastive accenting really is. Journal of Memory and Language, 63(3), 367–386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2010.06.004
25.
FraundorfS. H.BenjaminA. S.WatsonD. G. (2013). What happened (and what did not): Discourse constraints on encoding of plausible alternatives. Journal of Memory and Language, 69(3), 196–227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2013.06.003
26.
FrazierL.CliftonC.Jr. (1998). Comprehension of sluiced constituents. Language and Cognitive Processes, 13(4), 499–520. https://doi.org/10.1080/016909698386474
HajičováE.ParteeB. H.SgallP. (1998). Focus, topic and semantics. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Focus. UMass WPL (Vol. 21, pp. 101–124).
29.
HoleD. (2011). The deconstruction of Chinese shi…de clefts revisited. Lingua, 121, 1707-1733.
30.
HualdeJ. I.PrietoP. (2016). Towards an International Prosodic Alphabet (IPrA). Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 7(1), 1–25. http://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.11
31.
HusbandE. M.FerreiraF. (2016). The role of selection in the comprehension of focus alternatives. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 31(2), 217–235. http://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2015.1083113
32.
IttiL.KochC. (2000). A saliency-based search mechanism for overt and covert shifts of visual attention. Vision Research, 40(10–12): 1489–1506. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0042-6989(99)00163-7
33.
JasinskajaK. (2016). Information structure in Slavic. In FéryC.IshiharaS. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure (pp. 709–732). Oxford University Press.
34.
KadmonN. (2001). Formal pragmatics: Semantics, pragmatics, presupposition, and focus. Blackwell.
35.
KayserC.PetkovC. I.LippertM.LogothetisN. K. (2005). Mechanisms for allocating auditory attention: an auditory saliency map. Current Biology, 15(21), 1943–1947. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2005.09.040
36.
KissK. E. (1998). Identificational focus versus information focus. Language, 74(2), 245–273. https://doi.org/10.2307/417867
37.
LeeE.-K.GarnseyS. M. (2012). Do contrastive accents modulate the effect of intonational phrase boundaries in parsing?Lingua, 122(14), 1763–1775. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.09.009
38.
LeeE.-K.WatsonD. G. (2011). Effects of pitch accents in attachment ambiguity resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26(2), 262–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2010.491650
39.
LehisteI. (1973). Phonetic disambiguation of syntactic ambiguity. Glossa, 7, 107–122.
40.
ParkhurstD.LawK.NieburE. (2002). Modeling the role of salience in the allocation of overt visual attention. Vision Research, 42(1), 107–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0042-6989(01)00250-4
41.
PierrehumbertJ. (1980). The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. MIT dissertation.
42.
PotterD.CarlsonK. (2019). Focus scope marked by “only” influences syntactic attachment. Poster, 32nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. Boulder, CO.March 2019.
43.
PriceP.OstendorfM.Shattuck-HufnagelS.FongC. (1991). The use of prosody in syntactic disambiguation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 90, 2956–2970. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.401770
44.
PynteJ.PrieurB. (1996). Prosodic breaks and attachment decisions in sentence parsing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 11(1–2), 165–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/016909696387259
RoothM. (1996). Focus. In LappinS. (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary semantic theory (pp. 271–297). Blackwell Reference.
48.
RyslingA.BishopJ.Clifton JrC.YacovoneA. (2020). Preceding syllables are necessary for the accent advantage effect. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148(3), EL285–EL288. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0001780
49.
SagI. A. (1980). Deletion and logical form. Garland Publishing.
50.
SchaferA. J. (1997). Prosodic parsing: The role of prosody in sentence comprehension. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dissertation Abstracts International, 58, 3499.
51.
SchaferA. J.CarterJ.CliftonC.Jr.FrazierL. (1996). Focus in relative clause construal. Language & Cognitive Processes, 11(1–2), 135–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/016909696387240
52.
SchwarzschildR. (1999). Givenness, AvoidF and other constraints on the placement of accent. Natural Language Semantics, 7, 141–177. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008370902407
53.
SedivyJ.Spivey-KnowltonM. (1994). The use of structural, lexical, and pragmatic information in parsing attachment ambiguities. In Clifton Jr.C.FrazierL.RaynerK. (Eds.), Perspectives on sentence processing (pp. 389–413). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
54.
SelkirkE. O. (1995). Sentence prosody: Intonation, stress, and phrasing. In GoldsmithJ. (Ed.), Handbook of phonological theory (pp. 550 – 569). Blackwell.
55.
SpalekK.GotznerN.WartenburgerI. (2014). Not only the apples: Focus sensitive particles improve memory for information-structural alternatives. Journal of Memory and Language, 70, 68–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2013.09.001
56.
SpeerS. R.KjelgaardM. M.DobrothK. M. (1996). The influence of prosodic structure on the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25(2), 249–271. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01708573
57.
TraxlerM. J.FrazierL. (2008). The role of pragmatic principles in resolving attachment ambiguities: Evidence from eye movements. Memory & Cognition, 36(2), 314–328. https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.2.314
VainioM.JärvikiviJ. (2006). Tonal features, intensity, and word order in the perception of prominence. Journal of Phonetics, 34(3), 319–342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2005.06.004
60.
WagnerM.WatsonD. G. (2010). Experimental and theoretical advances in prosody: A review. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25(7–9), 905–945. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690961003589492
61.
WatsonD.GibsonE. (2005). Intonational phrasing and constituency in language production and comprehension. Studia Linguistica, 59(2–3), 279–300. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9582.2005.00130.x
62.
WeichselgartnerE.SperlingG. (1987). Dynamics of automatic and controlled visual attention. Science, 238(4828), 778–780. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3672124
