Intonation Patterns of Disjunctive Questions

(Work in progress)

We observe that there are three intonation patterns for disjunctive questions, each of which has different implications. Consider for example the question

(1) Did John or Michael come to repair the water heater?

We will call the three intonation patterns for this question Flat, Open and Closed. Below, we give symbolic representations of these questions and sound samples in Dutch and Italian (English to be added):

(1F) Did John or Michael come to repair the water heater ↑?
Dutch | Italian | English

(1O) Did John ↑ or Michael ↑ come to repair the water heater?
Dutch | Italian | English

(1C) Did John ↑ or Michael ↓ come to repair the water heater?
Dutch | Italian | English

The corresponding affirmative assertion has a different word order in English and Dutch:

(2) John or Michael came to repair the water heater.

However, in Romance languages, like Italian, the word order need not change: a translation into Italian of (1) is

(1') È venuto Gianni o Michele a riparare la caldaia?

and a translation of (2) is

(2') È venuto Gianni o Michele a riparare la caldaia.

For the assertion, we again have the three intonation patterns:

(2F) John or Michael came to repair the water heater.
Dutch | Italian | English

(2O) John ↑ or Michael ↑ came to repair the water heater.
Dutch | Italian ? | English

(2C) John ↑ or Michael ↓ came to repair the water heater.
Dutch | Italian | English

We test the different effects of all these patterns by the appropriateness of certain answers. The reader is invited to combine questions above with answers below, and to judge how natural the combinations sound.

(3) Yes.
Dutch | Italian | English

(4) No.
Dutch | Italian | English

(5a) Oh,
Dutch | English
(5b) I did not know that.
Dutch | Italian | English

(6a) John came.
Dutch | Italian | English

(6b) Yes, John came.
Dutch | Italian | English

(7a) Michael came.
Dutch | Italian | English

(7b) Yes, Michael came.
Dutch | Italian | English

(Thanks to Ivano Ciardelli for his willingness to record the Italian soundbites.)

Last modified: 24 May, 2009.