Prosody of Positive and Negative Conjunction in English and Bangla

Abstract

In addition to merely joining multiple constituents, conjunction can serve as an explicit indicator of how those constituents are related – viz., if they are in a positive or negative semantic relation. Positive conjunction conveys a positive relation and is facilitated with markers such as and, so, or because. Conversely, negative conjunction conveys a negative relation and is facilitated with markers such as but, yet, or though. Because conjunction reliably conveys positive and negative semantic relations, previous literature has used prosodic closeness of positively/negatively related conjuncts as a proxy for underlying semantic closeness, examining prosodic correlates of conjunction to infer “closeness” of positive/negative relations. Factors used to operationalize prosodic closeness have included inter-conjunct pitch reset and pause duration, for which a decrease in either is associated with increased closeness. Beyond possible insight into inherent closeness of semantic relations, investigation of these prosodic correlates is also useful in that if they are found to reliably deviate between positive and negative conjunction, then conjunction can be used to better inform efforts to simulate natural speech, as in text-to-speech. Previous studies have found pitch reset and pause duration to be less between positive conjuncts than between negative conjuncts in English, but have observed the opposite effect in Japanese. Tokizaki and Kuwana (2009) propose that negative relations are underlyingly closer, but that this effect is obscured in English. The current study analyzed inter-conjunct pitch reset, pause duration, as well as phrase-final lengthening, in various positive and negative conjunction structures in English and Bangla in an effort to address this account, as well as primarily to determine whether conjunction is a reliable correlate of certain prosodic features. The current study replicated the apparent positivity-closeness effect in English, but could not draw conclusions from the Bangla results (beyond observation of pronounced phrase-final lengthening in negative conjunction), primarily due to methodological issues.