Intonacja zdań oznajmujących, rozkazujących i pytających w percepcji dorosłych użytkowniczek języka polskiego
Intonation of declarative, imperative and interrogative sentences in the perception of adult female users of Polish

Summary/Abstract: The article is concerned with categorical perception of sentence intonation. Its theoreticalpart presents conclusions from the literature on the semantics of voice pitch changesand sentence intonation, with particular reference to the Polish language. The empiricalpart presents the methodology and results of the author’s own research on the perceptionof intonation of isolated declarative, imperative and interrogative sentences. The obtainedresults lead to the conclusion that the most important factor for assigning individua lutterances to specific sentence categories is the general direction of the pitch of voicein the final segment of the utterance. It allowed the respondents to identify interrogativesentences, which were recognized with the greatest correctness. Declarative and imperativesentences, characterized by the falling final intonation, were less often correctly identified,yet these two categories differed in other features: the exact course of pitch changesin the final syllables, vowel length and distribution of intensities and (within them) theirtemporal characteristics, average values of fundamental frequency, intensity and durationof whole utterances, and ranges of their intonation contours. This leads to the conclusionthat these characteristics did not play a significant role in the categorical perceptionof sentence intonation exemplified in the presented study.

• Details
• Contents