Phrase-final rises as a prosodic feature in wh-questions in Swedish human-machine dialogue

This paper examines the extent to which optional final rises occur in a set of 200 wh-questions extracted from a large corpus of computer-directed spontaneous speech in Swedish and discusses the function these rises may have in signalling dialogue acts and speaker attitude over and beyond an information question. Final rises occurred in 22% of the utterances, primarily in conjunction with final focal accent. Children exhibited the largest percentage of final rises (32%), with women second (27%) and men lowest (17%). The distribution of the rises in the material is examined and evidence relating to the final rise as a signal of a social interaction oriented dialogue act is gathered from the distribution. Two separate perception tests were carried out to test the hypothesis that high and late focal accent peaks in a wh-question are perceived as friendlier and more socially interested than low and early peaks. Generally, the results were consistent with these hypotheses when the late peaks were in phrase-final position. Finally, the results of this study are discussed in terms of pragmatic and attitudinal meanings and biological codes.