Does Anger Influence Accentuation?

Contents

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical Approaches/ Studies on focus
2.1. Basic Notions of Information Structure, Manfred Krifka (2008)
2.2. Types of Focus in English, Carlos Gussenhoven (2008)
2.3. Givenness, AvoidF and Other Constraints on the Placement of Accent, Roger Schwarzschild (1999)
2.4. Sprache und Emotion, Monika Schwarz-Friesel (2012)

3. Empirical Investigation
3.1. Hypothesis
3.2. Design
3.3. Results and Evaluation

4. Conclusion

References

Appendix

Abstract

In linguistics, there are only few studies that investigate the correlation between emotion and language since language and cognition were treated as autonomous systems. One of the few books that puts an emphasis on this topic and analyses it in detail is Monika Schwarz-Friesel’s Sprache und Emotion published in 2012.

The following paper proves that in some situations, anger definitely influences accentuation. Hence, epithets, e.g. that torturer, which behave like a pronoun, and therefore refer to a previously mentioned DP, e.g. masseur, are accentuated in many cases, since it was uttered by an angry person.

1. Introduction

Feelings are what matter most in life

- CHARLES BIRCH

People are loving, suffering, and reflective human beings, because they have feelings. Emotions and feelings are reflected in all areas of existential human experience. With language, we express our subjective feelings. Thus, the relation between language and emotion is an important phenomenon, especially in the interpretation of the mediated. This area, however, has been excluded for long from linguistics and cognitive science investigation because they saw language and cognition as autonomous systems that were not heavily influenced by emotions (cf. Schwarz-Friesel 1). However, it is generally believed that the universal ability to primary emotions are innate. Basic emotions, such as happiness, anger, disgust, fear, contempt, and sadness can be recognized and expressed by people in all cultures. These emotions occur relatively short and intense (Ehrhardt and Pohl 10).

For some years now, as Schwarz-Friesel describes, there is an “emotional turn“ (ibid.). Emotions are now regarded as determinative parts of cognitive states and processes. Particularly in the area of language processing —both production and reception of linguistic utterances— shows the influence of language on cognitive processes (cf. Schwarz-Friesel 2 ff.). With (linguistic) utterances, emotions are expressed and named, aroused or intensified (cf. Schwarz-Friesel 6).

In this paper, I want to investigate the following hypothesis: When a speaker is angry, s/he puts an emphasis not only on the verb but also on the epithet which has a negative connotation (e.g. masseur - torturer) or even is an insult (e.g. boss - idiot). Hence, the aim of this paper is to show that in selected examples, the referential DP (the epithet), which is already given, is stressed.

I will define epithets as Patel-Grosz (2014:91), since she includes the “evaluative component“ which is perfectly adequate for this paper:

“Epithets are anaphoric expressions that look like definite descriptions, in the sense that they consist of a nominal component and a determiner. However, they differ from definite descriptions in that they involve a negative or positive evaluative component.“

An example for an epithet would be, e.g. when someone uses idiot to refer to his/her boss. The anaphoric expression idiot clearly involves a negative evaluative component.

In literature, a referential DP is unaccented because it is co-referential and therefore already given. I will define GIVEN as Schwarzschild (1999:147):

“An utterance is given iff it is entailed by prior discourse“.

There are other theories and investigations en masse, claiming that “focus¹ in English can be identified, either as the answer to a wh -question or as the accented element associated with a focus sensitive particle or the negation particle“ (Winkler 72). But there are hardly any studies that look on the influence of emotions on focus and accentuation. Other theories (Baumann and Riester 2010, Schwarzschild 1999, Gussenhoven 2008) provide rules and theories for which part of the sentence has to be accented.

In the first part, which is theory-oriented, I will start introducing the topic with basic notions of information structure to provide an overview. Then, I will dive into the topic of the placement of accents, to see which parts of a sentence, concerning the linguists mentioned above, have to be emphasized, and why. Up to this point, emotions will not play a role at all; since the authors, in their papers, only analyze sentence structures on the syntactic level and hence, treat language as “an autonomous cognitive system“.

Schwarz-Friesel (2012), which is, in terms of emotions, the current state of research, finally analyzes the interaction of cognitive and emotional factors and shows the particularly intensive symbiosis of emotion and language (cf. Schwarz-Friesel 2).

2. Theoretical Approaches

2.1. Basic Notations of Information Structure, Manfred Krifka (2008)

To define Information Structure (IS), Krifka uses Chafe’s term of packaging. Hence, IS is a “packaging of the information conveyed in an utterance“ (Krifka, 244). In his article Basic Notations of Information Structure, he gives an overview of the basic notations of Information Structure (IS), such as focus, topic, and givenness.

For the term focus, Krifka uses the following definition of Rooth 1985 because, in this definition there is captured the most successful understanding of focus is captured there:

(1) “Focus indicates the presence of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of linguistic expressions“ (Krifka, 247).

Of course, this rather general definition does not say anything about how focus is marked, but it might well be that different ways of focus marking signal different ways of how alternatives are exploited (Krifka, 248). Hence, definition (1) does not say anything about the nature of the alternatives that are relevant for interpretation (ibid.); therefore, Krifka introduces the terms denotation focus and expression focus. The latter is typically used for corrections² and often comes with an overt negation (cf. ibid.). The relevant expressions BERlin and BerLIN only differ in their accent and speaker B corrects speaker A (Krifka, 249).

(2) A: They live in BERlin.

B: They live in [BerLIN]F

In expressions with denotation focus the relative alternatives are construed on the level of denotations leading to alternative denotations of complex expressions.

Moreover, Krifka presents more types of focus³. The classical pragmatic use of focus is to highlight the part of an answer that corresponds to the wh-part of a constituent question (Krifka, 250).

(3) A: Who did John’s mother praise?

B: She praised [HIM] F (Schwarzschild 158)

Other pragmatic uses of focus are to correct and confirm information,

(4) A: Mary stole the cookie.

B: No, [PEter]F stole the cookie!

B’: Yes, [MAry]F stole the cookie.

to highlight parallels,

(5) MAry stole the COOKie and PEter stole the CHOcolate

or to make the addressee aware of a delimination of the utterance to the constituent in focus

(6) In MY opinion, JOHN stole the cookies (cf. Krifka 250 ff.).

2.2. Types of Focus in English, Carlos Gussenhoven (2008)

Since in his article, Gussenhoven provides more different types of focus which may be relevant for the interpretation of my investigation, I will present them, here.

Pitch accents in English indicate that the speaker means to stress the importance of the word they appear on (Gussenhoven 83). Hence, pitch accents signal the focus word or constituent of the sentence. Nevertheless, the connection between the pitch accent and pragmatic “importance“ is not word-based (cf. ibid). An accented word can also signal the focus of a larger constituent (ibid.).

In general, speakers form a dialogue so as to establish a common understanding about some aspects of the world and indicate the way their information relates to the hearer’s understanding. Pitch accents express this “information status“(ibid.).

Types of focus in Gussenhoven’s article are listed in the following:

- Presentational focus: “The term ’focus’ is usually equivalent to ’presentational focus’. The focus constituent is the part of the sentence that corresponds to the answer to a question“ (Kanerva 1989).
- Corrective focus: When the focus marks a constituent that is a direct rejection of an alternative […], the focus is corrective.

(7) A: The capital of Finland is OSlo

B: (NO.) The capital of Finland is [HELsinki]CORRECTIVE

- Definitional focus: Here, the speaker indicates that the information does not refer to a change in the world, but informs the hearer of attendant circumstances. A definitional focus requires accents on both subject and predicate, whereas presentational subject-predicate sentences require the predicate to be unaccented.

(8) a. [Your EYES are red]EVENTIVE

b. [Your EYES are BLUE]DEFINITIONAL

The eventive and definitional distinction is similar, but not identical to the distinction between ‘individual level’ and ‘stage level’. The latter involve transient qualities as in example a., where the redness is due to swollen eyelids, and individual level predicates to permanent qualities, as in b., where blue refers to the color of the iris.

- Reactivating focus: This type of focus marks old information. The ‚‘given’ John in (…) is picked out by the syntactic device Topicalization.

(9) A: Does she know John?

B: JOHN she DISLIKES

2.3. Givenness, AvoidF and Other Constraints on the Placement of Accent, Roger Schwarzschild (1999)

In his article published in 1999, Schwarzschild describes a theory on F-marking and accent placement by introducing several constraints. He first refers to Selkirk’s theory and gives improvements in giving up projections of F-marks. Selkirk provides following rules:

(10) F-Assignment Rules:

Basic F-Rule: An accented word is F-marked. F- Projection:

a. F-marking of the head of a phrase licenses the F-marking of the phrase.

b. F-marking of an internal argument of a head licenses the F-marking of the head (Schwarzschild 1999).

Schwarzschild, however, demonstrates that if heads and internal arguments have to be unstressed by virtue of being discourse given, a specifier, adjunct, or any other element can bear the accent of a larger focus domain (cf. Schwarzschild 143). Since Selkirk’s rules do not allow the projection of an accent from such constituents, Schwarzschild proposes replacing the projection rules by free assignment of F-marks. To do so, he presents the following constraints:

(11) GIVENness: If a constituent is not F-marked, it must be GIVEN.

(12) AVOIDF: F-mark as little as possible, without violating GIVENness (Schwarzschild, 156).

An extra constraint, which posits that a head is less prominent than its internal argument(s), decides the location of the pitch accent (cf. ibid.170).

(13) What did John’s mother do?

A: She [[PRAISED]F him]F

(14) Who did John’s mother praise? A: She praised [HIM]F

In his article, Schwarzschild tried to explain why there are more words focused than the respond to the wh- word. In (5A), the VP and IP are not F-marked and it is their interpretation as GIVEN that requires F-marking of HIM. In (6A), the VP is F-marked, hence the only thing that could force him to be F-marked is that it is being novel in the discourse (Schwarzschild 161).

Moreover, just as Krifka, Schwarzschild also claims that “the piece of the answer that corresponds to the wh-word is F-marked“ (Schwarzschild 145).

2.3 Sprache und Emotion, Monika Schwarz-Friesel (2012)

If you look at the current state of research, it is striking that emotions in the linguistic explanation of mental and linguistic phenomena, have no or only a marginal importance.

[...]

¹ “[…] F[ocus]-marked words are bearers of pitch accents“ (Schwarzschild 143) and “[…] pitch accents signal the focus constituent of the sentence“ (Gussenhoven 2). Hence, focus, stress, and accent are synonyms here.

² In Gussenhoven 2008, this type of focus is named “corrective focus“.

³ I will only focus on selected types, since I may need them for the interpretation of my investigation.