The Effect of listener and speaker gender on the perception of rises in AusE

Australian English (AusE) uses High Rising Tunes at the end of questions and statements. However, it remains unclear whether listeners can distinguish between them perceptually. This study analyses the identification of question- and statement-rises in the absence of contextual information. Results suggest that identification is strongly influenced by speaker and listener gender. Specifically, it appears that male listeners use pitch differences in pitch accents for perceptual discrimination, just as they do in production, while female listeners rely on the speaker gender: female utterances are perceived as questions, male utterances as statements. Contrastingly, listener gender did not affect the interpretation of boundary tones: the highest tones are associated with questions, the lowest with statements. However, the middle step shows the bias for questions of female and statements of male speakers again. These results are important for L2 learners of AusE, and hearing impaired populations where subtle pitch differences are lost.