All rise? the perception of falls, plateaux and simple rises in belfast english

This paper investigates the perception of rising and falling F0 in statements and questions in Belfast English. This variety is known for its statement rises, realised as rise-plateaux, but recently, younger speakers have begun producing another statement rise, namely uptalk. This study presented 20 listeners of two age groups with stimuli stepwise manipulated to form high and low falls, as well as rises with different elbow and peak heights, and corresponding either to simple rises or rise-plateaux. Listeners were asked to identify stimuli as statements or questions. Results show that listeners primarily used rise shape and peak height to differentiate between statements and questions: simple rises with high peaks were more likely to be rated as questions. However, younger listeners exhibited signs that this distinction is blurring, with more simple rises interpreted as statements and less clear-cut distinctions between low, medium and high peaks.