Statements and questions in Persian are differentiated not only morphologically but also by intonational means. Earlier impressionistic accounts of Persian intonation suggest that the direction of the sentence-final fundamental frequency (F0) movement is the most salient intonational cue to questions and statements. Polar (yes/no) questions are often characterized by a high F0 rise (in AM terms, L-H%), whereas statements have a terminal F0 fall (in AM terms, L-L%). Recent experimental observations have revealed that the prenuclear and nuclear pitch accents in polar questions are realized with a greater pitch excursion compared to statements and that pitch peaks in the prenuclear and nuclear F0 regions are located significantly earlier in the question contour. However, it is generally assumed in the literature that the final rise versus fall contrast provides the necessary information to distinguish questions from statements in Persian and that the phonetic differences between questions and statements such as F0 excursion and overall F0 level are neither necessary nor sufficient cues to signal contrast in sentence modality in Persian. This study revisits, for Persian, how questions are signaled intonationally in utterances that have neither lexical nor syntactic cues. In a perception experiment, based on a gating paradigm, resynthesized stimuli were judged in relation to two context utterances, each of which was compatible with only one sentence mode interpretation. The stimuli were resynthesized with respect to the scaling and alignment of prenuclear and nuclear F0 rises and falls as well as the direction of the final F0 movement. Results showed that an utterance-final rise is not mandatory for question interpretation, as listeners can refer to slope and alignment differences of the preceding prenuclear and nuclear pitch accents to identify sentence mode. Based on the results of this study, we may suggest that prenuclear and nuclear pitch accents are actually more variable than previously thought and that variation in the prenuclear and nuclear F0 regions is meaningful and can convey the same meanings as the final pitch movement. These findings support earlier findings in the literature that the utterance-final rise versus fall contrast is not directly related to sentence modality but may convey an attitudinal meaning dimension.