Music & Language Studies

SHIPLEY-BROWN, Frances, William O. Dingwall, Charles I. Berlin, Grace Yeni-Komshian, and Sandra Gordon-Salant. “Hemispheric Processing of Affective and Linguistic Intonation Contours in Normal Subjects.” Brain and Language 33 (1988): 16-26.

Conducted dichotic listening experiments to test the hypothesis that processing of affective intonation is dissociable from processing of linguistic intonations. The distinction between these domains is based on Monrad-Krohn’s categories of prosodic function (see Monrad-Krohn 1963). Affective intonation is presented as contrasts between emotional affect (happy, sad, angry), whereas linguistic intonation relates to different types of utterances (statement, question, continuation). The results indicated that both of these conditions exhibited a left ear advantage (right hemispheric processing), however this effect was stronger for the affective condition. The authors argue that this can be explained in terms of a continuum, wherein the more linguistic the function of intonation, the less dominantly it is processed by the RH.

Since they do not cite Edmondson et al 1987, I can only assume that they were unaware of the study, which demonstrated relatively normal functioning of linguistic tone, but flattening of affective pitch contours. It was argued therefore that linguistic tone remains LH dominant, even in the presence of RH dominance for affective prosody. On the one hand, this might support the argument that processing of pitch in speech is along a continuum, such that the more affective the more RH dominant, the more linguistic the more LH. Additionally, however, it raiises questions as to the appropriateness of Monrad-Krohn’s distinction (adopted by this study) between linguistic and affective prosody, without attending to the special case of lexical tone, which seems to be subsumed in his description of intrinsic prosody. Thus the experimental design of this study is weakened.