Discussion

As already revealed in the introduction, the comparison of durations of the figurative and literal elements (both entire expressions and all corresponding words) of ditropic pairs reported in Gwóźdź (2017) indicated no statistically significant differences (save for the duration of kick the bucket and the words kick, the, therein, but the statistical difference disappeared after the multiple–comparison correction had been applied). This finding alone contradicted the results described by Van Lancker et al. (1981), Van Lancker and Canter (1981), Vanlancker–Sidtis (2003), or Yang et al. (2015). It can be easily inferred from the statistical summaries (and respective tests) of mean pitch and intensity values that neither pitch nor intensity in the figurative and literal elements of ditropic pairs serves as a clearly defined acoustic cue in the disambiguation of these polysemous strings. Curiously enough, these results also stand in stark contrast to those found in the aforementioned works.