Do prosodic cues convey intent directly or through contrastive marking? A study of French indirect requests

This study investigates how prosody contributes to the interpretation of French indirect requests. We ask whether prosodic cues directly map onto speech acts (Direct Mapping view) or primarily serve as contrastive markers, signaling a departure from the most likely interpretation (Contrastive Marking view). Four interrogative constructions were examined, each compatible with both a request and a yes/no question reading: modal interrogatives (Tu peux fermer la fenêtre ? ‘Can you close the window?’), non-modal interrogatives (Tu fermes la fenêtre ? ‘Are you closing the window?’), and their counterparts with est-ce que (Est-ce que tu peux fermer la fenêtre ? ‘Can you close the window?’; Est-ce que tu fermes la fenêtre ? ‘Are you closing the window?’). Norming studies with 320 French speakers established baseline request probabilities for these forms, confirming that modal interrogatives strongly favor a request interpretation, while non-modal forms—especially with est-ce que—were less likely to be interpreted as such. A production study with 8 native speakers elicited utterances intended as requests or questions, and acoustic features (mean F0, F0 slope, duration) were analyzed. A perception study with 280 listeners then tested whether these prosodic cues guided interpretation. Our results reveal a dual pattern: F0 slope consistently distinguished requests from questions across constructions, supporting the Direct Mapping view, whereas mean F0 and duration interacted with constructional features—their predictive value varied depending on the presence of a modal or est-ce que—in line with the Contrastive Marking view. Together, these findings suggest that prosody plays a non-uniform role in speech act recognition: some features act as stable signals of intent, while others are sensitive to the construction’s default interpretation. This work advances models of prosody and pragmatics by showing that prosodic cues can simultaneously function as direct markers of meaning and as signals of deviation from canonical interpretations.