Accents, Not Just Prosodic Boundaries, Influence Syntactic Attachment.
Katy Carlson, Joseph C Tyler
PMID 28686067WHAT IT FOUND
Placing a strong pitch accent on a verb makes listeners more likely to attach an ambiguous time phrase to that verb.
This happens regardless of pauses in the sentence. The effect is small but consistent across different sentence structures.
Key findings
01Accenting the first verb in a sentence significantly increased the likelihood of listeners attaching a following ambiguous phrase to that verb, compared to accenting the second verb.
02The effect of pitch accents on attachment was independent of prosodic boundaries; accents influenced interpretation even when no pause separated the phrase from the attachment site.
03Accenting the subject of a clause did not influence attachment, suggesting the effect requires accenting the specific word that heads the phrase where attachment occurs.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used only isolated sentences without broader discourse context, which is how pitch accents are typically used in natural conversation. The accents used were highly prominent contrastive accents (L+H*), so the results may not apply to more subtle pitch variations common in everyday speech. The effect sizes were small, meaning prosody is just one of many factors influencing comprehension and may not override strong syntactic biases.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that adding any stress to a word will clarify meaning for a patient. The study found that only strong, contrastive accents on the specific head of the phrase (the verb or noun) influenced attachment, and the effect was small. It does not suggest that prosody can easily override a patient's syntactic deficits.