Prosody is adding what?: Echo questions are not a thing
María Biezma, Bettina Braun, Angela James · Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory · 2022
While echo questions (EcQs) are often said to be identified by their prosodic properties, there is no empirical study actually supporting such claim. Focusing on wh-utterances we provide results from a production study, a classifier, and a perception study to argue that prosody is not a reliable cue to identify an inquisitive utterance as EcQ. We also offer a model that unifies the semantics of utterances inquiring about what has just been said (EcQs) and utterances inquiring about ‘non-discursive’ facts, information seeking questions (InfQs), while keeping the interpretation of the utterance true to form.