2007 Presentations (Communicative Events)

Intonational Overload: Uses of the Downstepped (H* !H* L- L%) Contour in Read and Spontaneous Speech

Hirschberg, Julia Bell; Gravano, Agustin; Nenkova, Ani; Sneed, Elisa; Ward, Gregory

Intonational contours are overloaded, conveying different meanings in different contexts. In this paper we examine two potential uses of the downstepped contours in Standard American English, in the Boston Directions Corpus of read and spontaneous speech. We investigate speakers ’ use of these contours in conveying discourse topic structure and in signaling given vs. new information and discuss the possible relationship between these two functions.