Categories and gradience in intonation: A functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study.

Post, B; Stamatakis, EA; Bohr, I; Nolan, F; Cummins, C

doi:10.1075/cilt.335.13pos

Categories and gradience in intonation: A functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study.

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Iwo Bohr

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by John Benjamins, 2015.

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Abstract

The Autosegmental-Metrical framework (AM) assumes that a distinctionneeds to be made between linguistic phonological information (categorical)and paralinguistic phonetic information (gradient) in intonation. However,empirical evidence supporting this assumption has proved to be elusive so far.In this study we analysed whether the theoretical distinction is reflected inperceptual biases and neural activation in the brain. The results of a combinedbehavioural and neuroimaging study demonstrate that intonational functionindeed activates different but overlapping neural networks with more widespreadactivation for categorical phonological stimuli, especially in middle temporalgyrus bilaterally and left supramarginal and inferior parietal areas. In contrast,for paralinguistic gradient stimuli activation is restricted to right inferior frontalgyrus. These neural differences mirror differences in response times in a listeningexperiment testing categorical perception for the same stimuli. These findingssupport a theoretical model of intonation, such as AM, in which linguistic andparalinguistic information are distinguished.