Hesitation and interrogative Swedish intonation

This paper presents the results of a perception experiment designed to investigate the contribution of a pre-focal hesitation pause, delayed focal peak and a raised F0 range for signaling interrogative mode in Swedish. The results support the hypothesis that a pause strengthens the interpretation of a focal peak delay as signaling question intonation. The results are discussed in terms of a framework of biological codes for universal meanings of intonation proposed by Gussenhoven.