Prosodic marking of semantic contrasts

The present research investigates what drives the prosodic marking of contrastive information. For example, a typically-developing speaker of a Germanic language like Dutch generally refers to a pink car as a “PINK car” (accented words in capitals) when a previously mentioned car was red. The main question addressed in this chapter is whether contrastive intonation is produced with respect to the speaker’s or (also) the listener’s perspective on the preceding discourse. Furthermore, this research investigates the production of contrastive intonation by typicallydeveloping speakers and speakers with autism. The latter group is investigated because people with autism are argued to have difficulties accounting for another person’s mental state and exhibit difficulties in the production and perception of accentuation and pitch range. To this end, utterances with contrastive intonation are elicited from both groups and analyzed in terms of function and form of prosody using production and perception measures. Contrary to expectations, typicallydeveloping speakers and speakers with autism produce functionally similar contrastive intonation, as both groups account for both their own and their listener's perspective. However, typically-developing speakers use a larger pitch range and are perceived as speaking more dynamically than speakers with autism, suggesting differences in their use of prosodic form. This chapter is based on: Kaland, C. C. L., Swerts, M. G. J., & Krahmer, E. J. (2013b). Accounting for the listener: Comparing the production of contrastive intonation in typicallydeveloping speakers and speakers with autism. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134(3), 2182-2196. Kaland, C. C. L., Krahmer, E. J., & Swerts, M. G. J. (2012b). Contrastive intonation in autism: The effect of speakerand listener-perspective. Proceedings 13 Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech), Portland (OR), USA, 1047-1050. CONTRASTIVE INTONATION: ACCOUNTING FOR THE LISTENER 21 2.