Phonetic Disambiguation of Syntactic Ambiguity

It has been frequently claimed that the meaning of syntactically ambiguous sentences (such as “Visiting relatives can be a nuisance”) can be made explicit by phonetic means such as stress and intonation. This study describes some ways in which such disambiguation can be accomplished. Fifteen ambiguous sentences were first read by four speakers. The ambiguities were then pointed out, and each speaker stated which meaning he had intended to produce. Each sentence was then produced again twice, the speaker making a conscious effort to differentiate between the two potential meanings. Thirty listeners tried to identify the meaning which the speakers had intended. In 10 out of 15 cases, listeners performed at better than chance level, which implies that the intention of the speakers was successfully communicated to the listeners. The suprasegmental patterns employed by the speakers in successful disambiguation were established by acoustic analysis. While stress and intonation play a part, timing seems to have been the principal means by which the two meanings of the sentence were differentiated.