{"pk":28614,"title":"Prosodic cues signal the intent of potential indirect requests","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Ambiguity pervades language. One prevalent kind ofambiguity is indirect requests. For example, “My office isreally hot” could be intended not only as a complaint aboutthe temperature, but as a request to turn on the AC. How docomprehenders determine whether a speaker is making arequest? We ask whether the prosody of an utterance providesinformation about a speaker’s intentions. In a behavioralexperiment, we find that human listeners can identify whichof two utterances a speaker intended as a request, suggestingthat speakers can produce discriminable cues. We then showthat the acoustic features associated with an utterance allow aclassifier to detect the original intent of an utterance (74%accuracy). Finally, we ask which of these features predictlistener accuracy on the behavioral experiment.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"indirect requests; prosody; language production;language comprehension; inference"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3fq178fd","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Sean","middle_name":"","last_name":"Trott","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","department":""},{"first_name":"Stefanie","middle_name":"","last_name":"Reed","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","department":""},{"first_name":"Victor","middle_name":"","last_name":"Ferreira","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","department":""},{"first_name":"Benjamin","middle_name":"","last_name":"Bergen","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2019-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28614/galley/18485/download/"}]}