I hear what you mean: intentional prosody in German and Mandarin Chinese. An acoustic and perceptual study

How we say something is often more important than what we say. Starting from this point, this Thesis aims to investigate the acoustic encoding and decoding of intentions in German and Mandarin Chinese prosody. Building on previous work (Hellbernd & Sammler, 2016; Just 2018), we tackle this question with two studies: first, an acoustic study using machine learning classifiers and statistical analyses and second, a behavioral rating experiment. The acoustic study aimed to test whether it is possible to (cross)classify intentions based solely on prosodic features while the behavioral study focused on investigating how acoustic cues contribute to the perception and recognition of intentions. We found that the relationship between encoding and decoding of intentions is not one-to-one and that in perception, acoustic cues contribute (but in different ways) to the recognition of native and foreign prosody. The results are discussed in light of pragmatics research and paralinguistic prosody research.