Auditory and Linguistic Processes in the Perception of Intonation Contours

The fundamental frequency contour of a 700-msec. vocoded utterance, "November" [no'vεmb ], was systematically varied to produce 72 contours, different in f₀ at the stress and over the terminal glide. The contours were recorded (1) carried on the speech wave, (2) as modulated sine waves. Swedish and American subjects classified (1) both speech and sine-wave contours as either terminally rising or terminally falling (psychophysical judgments), (2) speech contours as questions or statements (linguistic judgments). For both groups, two factors acted in complementary relation to govern linguistic judgments: perceived terminal glide and f₀ at the stress. Listeners tended to classify contours with an apparent terminal rise and/or high stress as questions, contours with an apparent terminal fall and/or low stress as statements. For both speech and sine waves psychophysical judgments of terminal glide were influenced by earlier sections of the contour, but the effects were reduced for sine-wave contours, and there were several instances in which speech psychophysical judgments followed the linguistic more closely than the sine wave judgments. It is suggested that these instances may reflect the control exerted by linguistic decision over perceived auditory shape.