The role of F0 and duration in the identification of wh-in-situ questions in Persian

Prosody plays an influential role in the recognition of Persian wh-in-situ questions (Shiamizadeh et al., in press). Perception of speech intonation is supported by several prosodic correlates (Lehiste, 1970). For instance, perception studies demonstrate that prosodic correlates do not contribute similarly to the identification of contrasts (oppositions) in speech intonation, and F0 contributes more prominently to the categorization of contrast in speech intonation (Lehiste, 1976; Peng et al., 2012). The current study manipulates a number of different prosodic correlates to investigate their relative contribution to sentence type categorization in Persian. This study also investigates whether identification is improved in congruent cue conditions in comparison to conflicting cue conditions. For this purpose, a perception experiment was designed in which native Persian speakers were required to listen to manipulated stimuli and decide if they perceived a wh-question or a declarative sentence. Based on the literature, we expect a primary role for F0 and a secondary role for duration in the perception of sentence modality contrasts. We also predict improved identification of sentence type in matching cue conditions in comparison to mismatching cue conditions. The results of the study confirm our predictions, i.e. a primary role of F0, and an increased identification in the matching cue condition is applicable to the perception of the contrast between Persian wh-in-situ questions and declaratives.