Form-meaning relationships in the lab and in the mountains

Abstract

We present a brief overview of form-meaning relationships investigated in controlled laboratory experiments and discuss whether and how the results generalize to form-meaning relationships “in the wild”. As a case study for non-laboratory situations, we use mountain hikes, which, like intonation, also involve peaks and slopes. Mountain hikes are exhausting for the hiker and have an influence on breathing and hence speech production. We investigate the prosodic realization of some typical illocution types found on mountain hikes (self-addressed questions, information-seeking questions, surprise questions) in two conditions, in a normal laboratory condition and in a simulated mountain hike condition. The results show no differences across recording conditions in speaking rate. In regard to pitch characteristics, self-addressed questions were produced with a lower f0-range and shallower slope in the lab than in the mountains, while information-seeking questions and surprise questions showed the opposite patterns. These differences are discussed in terms of the prosody-semantic interface and phonetic constraints. We further discuss the larger context, which also plays a pivotal role, and discuss ideas for future research, in the lab and in the mountains.