INDG 401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Accusative Case, Bestiary, Downstep
9 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Ling 450/650 Laboratory
Linguistics: Topics
This page summarizes potential topics for experiments for the course Ling 450 Laboratory
Linguistics, Winter 2018 at McGill University, taught by Michael Wagner.
You can find the schedule with links to other lectures here.
You can find the syllabus here.
Tentative Topic Ideas
Below, I outline basic ideas for some experiments three broad domains. What needs to be
figured out stillis what control conditions should be added, what exactly will the task look like,
will there be an questions that the participant asked on each trial, what confounds should be
avoided, what materials should be used, what factors should be counterbalanced across the
materials, etc. …
You can find a list of former experiments conducted in this class here.
Three dimensions of sentence prosody
As we discussed in class, when looking at sentence prosody we can identify three different
components or `dimensions’: prosodic phrasing, prominence, and tune. We can manipulate
each one of these separately, for example we can change the syntactic constituent structure
(which affects prosodic constiutent structure), but vary the intonational tune independently,
as well as prominence:
1. (Lauren and Mary) or Lenny vs. Lauren and (Mary or Lenny)
These can each be pronounced with a rising or a falling intonation, and with initial or final
prominence.
However, most theories of sentence prominence predict that these choices are not
independent of each other, but rather, they predict interactions. For example, changing
prominence should (under certain circumstances) affect the prosodic phrasing of the
utterance.
In a recent experiment in my lab we crossed these three dimensions in a single experiment,
and found that in actual fact, these predicted interactions are either not there or at at least
they are quite different from what various theories would predict (???).
In this project, several groups can work together to tease apart the way the three dimensions
work together. While (???) looked at the bracketing difference in coordinate structure (as
illustrated above), this experiment will use the early closure/late closure local ambiguity:
a. While Lauren was reading, the book fell of the table.
b. While Lauren was reading the book, the lamp fell of the table.
Apart from this manipulation, we will also vary the intonational tune:
a. While Lauren was reading, the book fell of the table?
b. While Lauren was reading the book, the lamp fell of the table?
And finally, we will also vary where prominence falls:
a. While LAUREN was reading, the book fell of the table? Wasn’t it Sue?
b. While LAUREN was reading the book, the lamp fell of the table? Wasn’t it
Sue?
Interaction
Involves two factors - prominence and phrasing
- In a 2x2 design, when change in one factor causes change in another - the two
factors are not independent
Main effect
- When one factor is being studied
- Eg: Shifted prominence erases phrasal distinction after the prominent syllable
We will investigate how each the acoustic cues to convey one dimensions is affected by the
other ones, and we can do this both in English and in French. This is a bigger study, and
requires a number of groups to work on it in order to be feasible.
- We have found differences between English and French
Declaration and Downstep
- We tease these three dimensions surprisingly well, especially given that acoustic
measures influence all three of these prosodic measures
