Prosodic structure and wh-questions

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Phonetics
• Syntax

Background:

• Previous research suggested syntactic gaps influence prosodic contour.
• Specifically, a filler-gap dependency was claimed to explicitly encode gap location in phonological representation.
• Evidence included pre-gap word lengthening and increased pitch excursion across gaps.

Purpose of the Study:

• To challenge the claim that syntactic gaps are explicitly encoded in the phonological representation of spoken utterances.
• To investigate the influence of wh-gaps on prosodic contour, controlling for confounding factors.
• To re-evaluate the phonological encoding of filler-gap dependencies.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of spoken utterances containing wh-gaps.
• Controlled experimental design to separate the effect of gaps from other prosodic factors.
• Examination of prosodic features such as word duration and pitch excursion.

Main Results:

• The study found no evidence that syntactic gaps are explicitly encoded in the phonological representation.
• Previously observed prosodic effects associated with gaps were attributed to confounding factors.
• Separating these factors eliminated the evidence for gap-specific prosodic encoding.

Conclusions:

• The phonological representation of sentences does not appear to explicitly encode the location of syntactic gaps.
• Prosodic variations previously linked to gaps are likely influenced by independent intonational phrasing factors.
• The findings challenge the hypothesis that filler-gap dependencies have a direct impact on speech prosody.