Chapter published in:
Crossroads Semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar
Edited by Hilke Reckman, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Maarten Hijzelendoorn and Rint Sybesma
[Not in series 210] 2017
► pp. 155–176

Prosody of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in Dutch and German

| University of Pannonia, Hungary | Leiden University, The Netherlands
| Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
Restrictive and appositive relative clauses differ in their meaning and structure. The first restrict the class to which the antecedent refers, whereas the latter denote additional information on the antecedent. In terms of structure, this difference concerns the relation between antecedent and relative clause, which is either narrow (restrictives) or loose (appositives). How these relations are encoded in prosody is the topic of investigation. Although there is considerable agreement on what prosodic cues distinguish restrictives and appositives across languages, claims mainly come from prescriptive literature. The current study investigates the structure-prosody interface experimentally by means of perception tests for Dutch and German. Results indicate that these languages differ in how prosody signals structural cohesion or breaking.
Keywords: restrictive, appositive, relative clause, structure-prosody interface, Dutch, German
Published online: 12 April 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.210.10van
References

References

Adriaens, Leon M. H.
1991 Ein Modell Deutscher Intonation. Eindhoven: Technische Universiteit Eindhoven dissertation.Google Scholar
Auran, Cyril & Rudy Loock
2006 Appositive relative clauses and their prosodic realization in spoken discourse: A corpus study of phonetic aspects in British English. In Candy Sidner, John Harpur, Anton Benz & Peter Kühnlein (eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Constraints in Discourse, 117–124.Google Scholar
Bianchi, Valentina
2002 Headed relatives in generative syntax – Part 2. Glot International 6. 1–13.Google Scholar
Birkner, Karin
2008 Relativ(satz)konstruktionen im gesprochenen Deutsch. Syntaktische, prosodische, semantische und pragmatische Aspekte. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink
2008 Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.0.43). http://​www​.praat​.org.
Brandt, Margareta
1990 Weiterführende Nebensätze. Zu ihrer Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.Google Scholar
Chen, Aoju
2007 Language-specificity in the perception of continuation intonation. In Carlos Gussenhoven & Tomas Riad (eds.), Tones and tunes II: Phonetic and behavioural studies in word and sentence prosody, 107–142. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, William E. & Jeanne Paccia-Cooper
1980 Syntax and speech. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dirksen, Arthur & Ludmila Menert
1999 Fluency Speech Editor (Version 1.3). Utrecht: Fluency Speech Technology. http://​www​.fluency​.nl.
Emmonds, Joseph E.
1976 A transformational approach to English syntax. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Fon, Yee-Jean J.
2002 A cross-linguistic study on syntactic and discourse boundary cues in spontaneous speech. Columbus OH: Ohio State University dissertation.Google Scholar
Garro, Luisa & Frank Parker
1982 Some suprasegmental characteristics of relative clauses in English. Journal of Phonetics 10. 149–161.Google Scholar
Grabe, Esther
1998 Comparative intonational phonology: English and German. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen dissertation.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos, Toni Rietveld, Joop Kerkhoff & Jacques Terken
2003 ToDI: Transcription of Dutch Intonation. http://​todi​.let​.kun​.nl.
Haan, Judith
2001 Speaking of questions. An exploration of Dutch question intonation (LOT dissertation series 52). Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Hart, Johan ’t, René Collier & Antonie Cohen
1990 A perceptual study of intonation, an experimental-phonetic approach to speech melody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hirst, Daniel
1993 Peak, boundary and cohesion characteristics of prosodic grouping. Working Papers of Lund University 41. 32–37.Google Scholar
Holler, Anke
2005 Weiterführende Relativsätze. Empirische und theoretische Aspekte. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Kager, René
1988 Plaatsing van zinsaccenten en pauzes in spraak [Location of sentence accents and pauses in speech]. In Marcel P. R. van den Broecke (ed.), Ter sprake: Spraak als betekenisvol geluid in 36 hoofdstukken, 416–427. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kaland, Constantijn C. L. & Vincent J. van Heuven
2010 The structure-prosody interface of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in Dutch and German. Chicago IL: Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2010 100064, 1–4.Google Scholar
Kan, Seda
2009 Prosodic domains and the syntax-prosody mapping in Turkish. Bebek/Istanbul: Boğaziçi University MA Thesis.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian
1984 Der Relativsatz. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar
Moulines, Eric & Werner Verhelst
1995 Time-domain and frequency-domain techniques for prosodic modification of speech. In W. Bastiaan Kleijn & Kuldip K. Paliwal (eds.), Speech coding and synthesis, 519–555. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.Google Scholar
Neijt, Anneke
1991 Universele fonologie. Een inleiding in de klankleer [Universal phonology. An introduction to sound structure]. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Nespor, Marina & Irene Vogel
1985 Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Nooteboom, Sibout G., Brokx, Jan P. L. & Jacobus J. de Rooij
1978 Contributions of prosody to speech perception. In Willem J. M. Levelt & Giovanni B. Flores d’Arcais (eds.), Studies in the perception of language, 75–107. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Potts, Christopher
2003 The logic of conventional implicatures. Los Angeles CA: University of California Los Angeles dissertation.Google Scholar
Rialland, Annie
2007 Question prosody: an African perspective. In Carlos Gussenhoven & Tomas Riad (eds.), Tunes and Tones, Volume 1: Typological studies in word and sentence prosody, 35–62. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rijpma, Enneus. & Schuringa, Frans G.
1972 Nederlandse spraakkunst. (24th ed.). Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.Google Scholar
Rooij, Jacobus J. de
1979 Speech punctuation. Utrecht: Utrecht University dissertation.Google Scholar
Schaffranietz, Brigitte
1999 Relativsätze in aufgabenorientierten Dialogen: Funktionale Aspekte ihrer Prosodie und Pragmatik in Sprachproduktion und Sprachrezeption. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld dissertation.Google Scholar
Schubö, Fabian, Anna Roth, Viviana Haase & Caroline Féry
2015 Experimental investigations on the prosodic realization of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in German. Lingua 154. 65–86. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth
2005 Comments on Intonational Phrasing in English. In Sonia Frota, Marina Vigario & M. João Freitas (eds.), Prosodies: Selected papers from the Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia Conference 2003, 11–58. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Truckenbrodt, Hubert
2005 A short report on intonation phrase boundaries in German. Linguistische Berichte 203. 273–296.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de
2000 Appositive relative clauses. In Helen de Hoop & Ton van der Wouden (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 2000 (Linguistics in the Netherlands 17), 221–231. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar