title: The role of syntactic obligatoriness in the production of intonational boundaries.
abstract: Researchers have hypothesized that words that are highly related semantically are more likely to occur within the same intonational phrase (F. zzaq;, 1988; E. O. Selkirk, 1984). D. Watson and E. Gibson (2004) proposed that semantic closeness can be captured by using the argument/adjunct distinction, such that intonational boundaries are more likely to occur before adjuncts than before arguments. In the current experiment, the authors compared two aspects of argumenthood: semantic relatedness and obligatoriness. In a production study, speakers were more likely to place an intonational phrase boundary between a word and a dependent if the dependent was optional (e.g., after "investigation" in "The reporter's investigation [of the crash] unnerved the officials") than if the dependent was obligatory (e.g., after "investigated" in "The reporter investigated [the crash], and this unnerved the officials"). These data suggest that obligatoriness is a better predictor of intonational boundary placement than semantic closeness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. dgwatson@uiuc.edu
authors.forename: Duane
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.forename: Mara
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Breen
authors.forename: Edward
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gibson
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*