In:Above and Beyond the Segments: Experimental linguistics and phonetics
Edited by Johanneke Caspers, Yiya Chen, Willemijn Heeren, Jos Pacilly, Niels O. Schiller and Ellen van Zanten
[Not in series 189] 2014
► pp. 165–173
Doing grammatical semantics as if it were phonetics
Published online: 10 December 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.189.14kir
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.189.14kir
This paper revisits two articles co-authored with van Heuven which study the
semantics of grammatical signals quantitatively – as if semantics were phonetics.
Kirsner & van Heuven (1988) demonstrates that the Dutch demonstrative
adjective deze ‘this/these’ refers back in texts over more sentence boundaries
than die ‘that/those’ does, indicating that its referent is more central in the
discourse. Van Heuven & Kirsner (1999) shows that the perceived forcefulness
of the Dutch verb stem imperative (Doe de deur dicht! ‘Close the door’) is more
sensitive to the pitch level of the speaker than the perceived forcefulness of the
infinitivus pro imperativo (De deur dichtdoen) is, suggesting that the verb stem
imperative has less semantic content than the infinitivus pro imperativo.
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