The interaction of discourse markers and prosody in rhetorical questions in German

Recent research has shown that rhetorical questions (RQs) have certain prosodic characteristics in terms of voice quality, tempo, and intonation, which distinguish them from genuine, information-seeking (ISQs). This paper focuses on the interaction between cues to meaning one hand, lexical morpho-syntactic means, other, German. The production experiment reported here addresses three questions, short: (i) do speakers prefer a specific syntactic construction for an RQ, (ii) they make use means signal meaning, (iii) what is those cues. answers are: yes ( wh- questions), (especially discourse markers (DiPs)), we find additive effect enforcing message. When (or morpho-syntactic) are used, not observe reduction or lack at same time. For example, when DiP present, RQ will still typical nuclear accent edge tone, i.e., used additive, rather than exclusive way. There are, however, RQs marked only prosody, without any present.