Prosody

Prosody and Syntax

Prosody is often linked with syntax, the grammatical rules of language. Prosody helps provide clues to indicate the intended meaning. For example, in the sentence, “The young men and women practice their instruments,” it is not clear whether both the men and women are young, or only the men are young. The produced timing and pitches help the listener understand what is meant. Similarly, prosody helps clarify sentences involving attachment, such as “The conductor hit the cellist with a pencil.” If pauses are inserted differently in the sentence, both the phrases and the interpretation of the pencil holder change. (“The conductor hit / the cellist with a pencil.” Versus “The conductor hit the cellist / with a pencil.”) Despite these connections between prosody and syntax, there is not a perfect mapping between the two. Some syntactically ambiguous sentences are not disambiguated by prosody, such as “Visiting musicians can be delightful.” Although syntax may constrain prosody, the same sentence can have multiple prosodic interpretations. The sentence, “She gave the cellist the music,” could be produced in several prosodically different ways, while retaining the syntactic (grammatical) meaning (e.g., “She gave the CELLIST the music.” “She gave the cellist the MUSIC.” “She gave the cellist the music?”)

Linguistic Prosody

Prosody helps to indicate the focus of a sentence. “Which box do you want? I want the BLUE one.” By adding greater amplitude, a higher F0, and lengthening a syllable, the interpretation is communicated. Prosody also indicates whether a sentence is declarative or interrogative. The sentence, “You are practicing this afternoon,” could be either a statement or a question, depending on the F0 change at the end of the sentence. A rise in pitch indicates a question, while a fall in pitch indicates a statement. Prosody helps the listener both in real-time interpretation of a spoken sentence as well as in their later memory for the sentence. Listeners (both adults and children) retain the prosody in their memory for sentences they have heard before.

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