Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
186,631 studies31 sourcesUpdated 17 min ago
Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0PLOS One

Beyond semantics: Prosody can shape and modulate listeners’ emotional experience of poetry — A cross-linguistic investigation

  • Yan Li1
  • Ziqing Huang2
  • Yannan Zhang3
  • Yufeng Chen
  1. 1College of Arts, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China
  2. 2Foreign Studies College, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China
  3. 3School of Literature, Shandong University, Jinan, China
Open at sourcePDFDOICite

Abstract

Expressive prosody plays an important role in conveying emotion during oral poetry performance. This study investigated whether emotional prosody can serve as a perceptually robust cue for emotion judgment when semantic comprehension is unavailable. Experiment 1 confirmed systematic acoustic differences between joyful and sad poem recitations: joyful recitations exhibited higher normalized pitch, greater vocal intensity, and faster articulation rate, whereas sad recitations exhibited lower normalized pitch, reduced intensity, slower articulation rate, and reduced harmonicity. Experiment 2 employed a 3 (prosody–semantics alignment: congruent, incongruent, neutral) × 2 (valence: joy vs. sadness) × 2 (listener group: native Mandarin vs. Mandarin-naive Japanese listeners) design. When prosody and semantics were aligned, both listener groups produced the strongest emotion ratings consistent with the poems’ intended valence. Critically, Mandarin-naive Japanese listeners, who had no access to Chinese semantic content, showed strong modulation of affective judgments by available prosodic cues when vocal expression conflicted with the poems’ textual valence. Native Mandarin listeners integrated semantic and expressive prosodic information, but prosodic manipulations substantially weakened semantic biases and, in some cases, shifted semantically driven judgments. These findings suggest that prosodic configuration is an important component of expressive vocal realization in poetic recitation, shaping listeners’ affective responses alongside semantic content. Arousal-related acoustic variation may further contribute to these prosodic effects.

Related

  1. Connecting Base-Extension Semantics, Beth Semantics, and Ecumenical Logic
    Victor Barroso-Nascimento, Joaquim T. Waddington, Elaine Pimentel
    arXivPreprintCC BY 4.0Full textLogic & foundationsarXiv
  2. Closure Semantics for Weak Modal Logics: Completeness and Representations
    Yuki Nishimura
    arXivPreprintCC BY 4.0Full textLogic & foundationsarXiv
  3. How to prove equations using diagrams: A categorical and operational semantics for e-graphs
    Evan Patterson
    arXivPreprintarXiv licenceFull textAlgebra & number theoryarXiv
  4. The Impact of Multilingualism on Self-esteem and Linguistic Identity
    Subhangi Roy
    PsyArXivPreprintAll rights reservedFull textStatisticsOSF
  5. Formal Bipolar Weighted Semantics for Generalized Argumentation Frameworks
    Stefano Ferilli
    MathematicsPeer-reviewedCC BY 4.0General mathematicsCrossref

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{li2026beyond,
  title = {{Beyond semantics: Prosody can shape and modulate listeners’ emotional experience of poetry — A cross-linguistic investigation}},
  author = {Yan Li and Ziqing Huang and Yannan Zhang and Yufeng Chen},
  journal = {PLOS One},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0345072},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0345072},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Beyond semantics: Prosody can shape and modulate listeners’ emotional experience of poetry — A cross-linguistic investigation
AU  - Yan Li
AU  - Ziqing Huang
AU  - Yannan Zhang
AU  - Yufeng Chen
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/08
JO  - PLOS One
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pone.0345072
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0345072
AB  - Expressive prosody plays an important role in conveying emotion during oral poetry performance. This study investigated whether emotional prosody can serve as a perceptually robust cue for emotion judgment when semantic comprehension is unavailable. Experiment 1 confirmed systematic acoustic differences between joyful and sad poem recitations: joyful recitations exhibited higher normalized pitch, greater vocal intensity, and faster articulation rate, whereas sad recitations exhibited lower normalized pitch, reduced intensity, slower articulation rate, and reduced harmonicity. Experiment 2 employed a 3 (prosody–semantics alignment: congruent, incongruent, neutral) × 2 (valence: joy vs. sadness) × 2 (listener group: native Mandarin vs. Mandarin-naive Japanese listeners) design. When prosody and semantics were aligned, both listener groups produced the strongest emotion ratings consistent with the poems’ intended valence. Critically, Mandarin-naive Japanese listeners, who had no access to Chinese semantic content, showed strong modulation of affective judgments by available prosodic cues when vocal expression conflicted with the poems’ textual valence. Native Mandarin listeners integrated semantic and expressive prosodic information, but prosodic manipulations substantially weakened semantic biases and, in some cases, shifted semantically driven judgments. These findings suggest that prosodic configuration is an important component of expressive vocal realization in poetic recitation, shaping listeners’ affective responses alongside semantic content. Arousal-related acoustic variation may further contribute to these prosodic effects.
SN  - 1932-6203
ER  -