Перцептивно изследване на комуникативната функция на интонацията при фрази с лексикално-граматичната структура на частен въпрос в немския и в българския

The paper presents the results of an investigation of the perception of utterances in which discourse functions are differentiated solely by intonation. The conclusions drawn from contrastive analysis of utterances having the structure of special questions in German and Bulgarian, on the whole, confirm some well-known hypotheses about general speech perception: invoking of additional information when decoding the foreign language signal despite similarities in the accent-rhythm patterns of the utterances in the two languages; additional information is sought despite the relatively clear communicative goal of the message in the given situation. On the perceptual level the paper argues that German declaratives have „deeper“ terminal falls than Bulgarian ones.