Interpreting the Scope of Negation in Three Varieties of German : The Effect of Prosodic Cues

Abstract

This paper presents two perception experiments on three German varieties investigating the effect of pause, intonation contour and peak alignment on (1) the scope of negation and (2) the strength of phrasal breaks. Subjects from Kiel, Vienna and Düsseldorf participated in both experiments which drew on the same set of stimuli. Results show that the interpretation of prosodic cues is task-specific, with intonation contour being predominantly used for scope disambiguation and pause being used for phrasing. This implies that the question of how German listeners resolve scope ambiguities cannot simply be attributed to the presence or absence of a phrasal break between the main and the subordinate clause. The interpretation of scope as wide vs. narrow rather depends on a more general impression of ‘cohesion’ between the clauses as indicated by prosodic means.