Perceptual cues for sentence intonation in Greek

Abstract

This is a study of intonational cues for the perception of statements and polar questions in Greek. A two-part experiment was conducted with synthetic stimuli with manipulated intonation targets in stress groups, from statement to question and vice versa. According to the results, the critical perceptual cue is the boundary tone, which led listeners to identify stimuli as the reverse sentence type (81-100%). However, the perception of intonational contrasts may be based on holistic contours.