The fields of investigation

Fo time courses can signal stress and intonation, and they do this with a certain degree of variability within the same linguistic pattern. Two complementary questions arise in connection with this variability. First, when do changes in the F0 contour (e.g. the shift of an F0 peak) across the same segmental string effect changes in linguistic patterning (= macro F0)? Here three cases have to be distinguished.

1. (a) In figures 7.1a and 7.1b, the position of the F0 peak in the center of the vowel of the syllable “-lo-” (figure 7.1a), in the syllable “ge-” (figure 7.1b, left peak), or late in the syllable “-lo-” (figure 7.1b, right peak) of the German sentence “ Sie hat ja gelogen.” (= “ She's been lying.”) does not change the word and sentence stress, but alters the intonation with corresponding changes of meaning from “established” for the early to “new” for the central to “emphatic” for the late F0 peak. See Kohler (1986b) and Kohler (1987) for experimental data.

2. (b) In figures 7.2 and 7.3a, the position of the F0 peak in the syllable “-la-” or “urn-” of German “umlagern” changes the verbal stress pattern from stem to prefix stress, but represents the same late intonation peak within each word accent.

3. (c) Figures 7.3a and 7.3b show changes in the stress pattern from prefix to stem combined with changes in intonation from late to early peak. This paper deals with the perceptual interaction of these stress and intonation functions of macro F0.