Article published in:
Above and Beyond the Segments: Experimental linguistics and phonetics
Edited by Johanneke Caspers, Yiya Chen, Willemijn Heeren, Jos Pacilly, Niels O. Schiller and Ellen van Zanten
[Not in series 189] 2014
► pp. 165–173

Doing grammatical semantics as if it were phonetics

This paper revisits two articles co-authored with van Heuven which study the semantics of grammatical signals quantitatively – as if semantics were phonetics. Kirsner & van Heuven (1988) demonstrates that the Dutch demonstrative adjective deze ‘this/these’ refers back in texts over more sentence boundaries than die ‘that/those’ does, indicating that its referent is more central in the discourse. Van Heuven & Kirsner (1999) shows that the perceived forcefulness of the Dutch verb stem imperative (Doe de deur dicht! ‘Close the door’) is more sensitive to the pitch level of the speaker than the perceived forcefulness of the infinitivus pro imperativo (De deur dichtdoen) is, suggesting that the verb stem imperative has less semantic content than the infinitivus pro imperativo.
Published online: 10 December 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.189.14kir
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