On the perceptual recognition of rhetorical questions

Abstract

This study investigates the perception of Italian minimal pair sentences formed by information-seeking questions and rhetorical questions. Two perception experiments were performed, the first using natural stimuli, the second using three different series of stimuli generated by manipulating respectively: 1) the duration of the nuclear vowel, 2) the final intonation contour, 3) both duration and final contour. The two types of questions behaved differently. The results showed that temporal manipulations contributed to the rhetorical interpretation more often than the manipulations of the final intonation contour.