Effects of Prosody on Conceptual Combination

Previous theories of conceptual combination comprehension have failed to address the possible role of suprasegmental factors such as prosody and emphasis patterns. In this study, we investigated the effect of prosody on the comprehension of novel noun-noun compounds. First, we formulate some predictions based on existing theories of conceptual combination and linguistic accounts of emphasis assignment. We then present a study that examines the effects different emphasis patterns on people’s comprehension of novel compounds. We found that emphasis influences the comprehension of novel word combinations, affecting the ease with which people can think of meanings. Overall we found that people exhibited a preference for initial word emphasis (Modifier emphasis) over equal (Dual) or final word (Head) emphasis. We also observed that some of these effects were dependent on the types of concepts being comprehended. We argue that existing theories need to incorporate suprasegmental factors to provide a fully-fledged account of conceptual combination.