The perceptual relevance of the French Initial Rise in identifying the left edge of a contrastive focus

Abstract

This study addresses the interplay between information structure and intonation in French. In a forced-choice perception task, we tested whether the French Initial Rise (Initial Rise) is of relevance in identifying the left edge of a non-corrective contrastive focus. Participants listened to two-clause sentences with parallel structures in the two clauses in which the segmental information of the direct object head noun in the second clause was missing (see Figure 1). Crucially, there was always a contrast on the final color adjective modifying the noun. On the intonational residual, we manipulated the presence (LHiLH*) or absence (LLH*) of an Initial Rise. Participants were asked to choose between the Given or a New referent. The latter would reflect a contrastive interpretation of the entire post-verbal argument, while the former would reflect a contrastive interpretation restricted to the final adjectival modifier of the direct object noun phrase. Results showed no bias toward either of the two interpretations as a function of the presence or absence of the Initial Rise as marking the left edge of a contrastive focus. As anticipated, however, the sentences’ parallelism induced an overall bias toward a contrastive interpretation. Several factors that may explain the present null result are discussed under the hypothesis that the Initial Rise is a weak cue to focus.