When is a question with a statement word order identified in standard Persian?

What is it about?

Some languages do not use word order to indicate a difference between statements and questions. These languages are called wh-in-situ languages, and construct questions by using statement word order, e.g. “Maria bought what?” or “Maria did what buy?”. One of the languages characterised by wh-in-situ questions is Persian. In order to disambiguate statements from questions, listeners can use prosodic cues (incl. pitch, duration, intensity, rhythm, stress, etc.) when processing the sentence. The current study investigated when prosodic cues were most helpful in identifying wh-in-situ questions correctly in Persian. It was found that listeners were able to predict the sentence type correctly very early, since accurate responses were given from the beginning of the sentence.

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Why is it important?

Persian is an understudied language with respect to the role of prosody in sentence type identification. This study illustrates that prosody can be used to predict the sentence type early in the utterance. It offers more insights on the role of prosody in speech production and sentence processing.