In an empirical study participants were asked to rate the perceived degree of certainty of utterances that contained either the modal would or main verb be (e.g. That would be me vs. That’s me), and which were also variously produced with one of three intonational contours (downstepped, declarative, and yes-no question). We found that both downstepped contour and epistemic would made a significant and independent contribution to the assessment of speaker certainty. That is, participants rated utterances with the downstepped contour as most certain, followed by those with the declarative contour, while the yes-no question contour was perceived as highly uncertain. Similarly, participants rated speakers' responses with epistemic would as significantly more certain than those without it.
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机译：在一项实证研究中，要求参与者对发声确定性的感知程度进行评分，发声的确定性包含模态将要或主要动词be（例如，That will be me vs. That Is me），并且也以三种国际轮廓之一生成（降级，声明性和是-否问题）。我们发现，走低的轮廓和认知都会对说话人确定性的评估做出重要而独立的贡献。就是说，参与者对语音的降级轮廓最确定，其次是对陈述性轮廓的发音，而“是-否”问题轮廓被认为是高度不确定的。同样，参与者对演讲者对认知的反应的评价也要比没有对后者的评价高得多。
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