Nicole Dehé (Universität Konstanz) will give an in-person colloquium.
The prosody of exclamatives in Icelandic
Exclamatives (EXCL) are often considered one of four main sentence types (declaratives (DECL), interrogatives, imperatives, EXCL). However, interrogative and declarative syntax is used across languages to express exclamatory meaning. In other words, to signal EXCL, interlocutors rely on other formal means, i.e., prosody
The prosody of Icelandic EXCL has not previously been studied. I will report on results of the prosodic analysis (intonation and voice quality) of Icelandic XP-exclamatives starting with a degree adverb (e.g., Svakalega er sultan góð! ‘The jam is so good!’), and wh-exclamatives starting en hve ‘but how’ (e.g., (En hve)ω Lára málar fallega! ‘How beautifully Lára paints!’). Hypotheses will be based on our knowledge of Icelandic prosody more generally, as well as knowledge of the prosody of exclamatives in other languages. Results will be compared with previous work on the prosody of Icelandic wh-questions (both information-seeking and rhetorical) and assertive declaratives.
In a nutshell, our results show that Icelandic exclamatives differ from non-exclamatives in intonation (more prenuclear accents, different types of pitch accents) and voice quality (use of non-modal voice quality). The two types of exclamatives are similar with respect to their prosodic characteristics.
The results are in line previous work showing that Icelandic uses intonation (but except final boundary tones) and other prosodic cues to signal sentence and illocution types. More generally, this work contributes to our understanding of the prosody-meaning interface.
