tonicitywhether

Tonicitywhether is a theoretical construct in linguistics used to describe how the tonal profile of a sentence is influenced by the presence of an embedded clause introduced by the word whether. It combines ideas from tonicity, the distribution of pitch accents and intonational structure, with the functional role of the conjunction whether in signaling indirect questions or alternative content.

Etymology and scope: The term blends tonicity, related to prosodic emphasis and pitch movement, with whether, the subordinating connective used to present uncertainty, alternatives, or indirect questioning. As a concept, tonicitywhether is intended for cross-linguistic comparison of how main-clause prosody interacts with embedded whether-clauses.

Concept and methodology: Tonicitywhether is typically operationalized by acoustic measurements such as mean F0, F0 range, and the pattern of pitch accents across the clause boundary. Researchers compare sentences with and without a whether-clause or manipulate focus to examine how prosody shifts when an embedded content question is present. Data are collected in elicited tasks or naturalistic speech and analyzed with phonetic and statistical methods.

Applications and examples: In English, a sentence like I wonder whether she will attend often shows different emphasis patterns than a direct question, affecting both the main clause and the embedded clause. The concept is used to study how speakers manage intonation to convey uncertainty, scheduling, or focus across clause boundaries, and to compare languages with different intonational systems.

Limitations: As a proposed construct, tonicitywhether lacks a standardized measurement protocol and may vary with dialect, discourse context, and recording conditions. See also tonicity, prosody, indirect question.