On the role of the late rise and the early fall in the turn-taking system of Dutch

Abstract

The question posed in the present paper is whether subjects interpret a short utterance with a late non-prominent rise in pitch (LH%) as having a ‘go on’ function, prompting the current speaker to continue, whereas the same short utterance spoken with an accent-lending fall (H*L L%) is associated with finality, for example, with the answer to a yes-no question. A series of three perception experiments were run with natural data taken from Dutch Map Task dialogues. The results support the hypothesis that the LH% contour is associated with a ‘go on’ response, while the falling contour is associated with the answer to a question. Furthermore, LH% is preferred over H*L L% in contexts leading to backchannel responses, while there is no preference for either contour in question contexts. Finally, the LH% contour is acceptable in both context types, whereas the accent-lending fall is unacceptable in backchannel contexts.