QUESTION INTONATION IN NON-SCRIPTED DANISH DIALOGUES

Nina Grønnum & John Tøndering
Linguistics Laboratory, Dept. of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen

ID 1202
[full paper]

Global intonation contour slopes in read speech have been found to vary systematically according to utterance type. Statements have the steepest gradients, wh-question contours are slightly less steep, questions with word order inversion less steeply falling again, and so-called declarative questions have no gradient at all, i.e. their global contour is level. Furthermore, in all but the very shortest utterances onset and offset of the global intonation contour appear relatively constant in the frequency range across varying utterance length. This paper is a first exploration into Danish question intonation in nonscripted speech.