Phrasal prosody disambiguates syntax

Two experiments tested whether phonological phrase boundary cues, as produced by naive speakers, constrain syntactic analysis in French. Pairs of homophones belonging to different syntactic categories ( verb and adjective) were inserted within locally ambiguous sentences that differed in their prosodic structure ( e. g., [les pommes dures]… – hard apples… – versus [les pommes] [durent…] – apples last… -where brackets indicate phonological phrase boundaries). In Experiment 1 six speakers, unaware of the ambiguities, recorded the sentences. Acoustical analyses showed that they all produced reliable prosodic cues (phrase-final lengthening and pitch rise). Experiment 2 tested whether listeners exploited these prosodic cues to constrain syntactic analysis. They listened to the sentences beginnings ( cut after the ambiguous word) and completed them in writing. Their assignments of the target words to their correct syntactic categories were better than chance. We discuss these results in light of the on-going debate about the production of disambiguating prosody by speakers who are unaware of the ambiguities.