Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English

Abstract

The results of a production experiment show that English speakers distinguish elements under contrastive focus from elements that are merely new in the discourse. A novel paradigm eliciting both contrastively focused and merely discourse-new elements in the same sentence avoids differences in information structure and pitch accenting in the context surrounding the target elements that were confounds in previous studies on the topic. Elements under contrastive focus show greater duration, relative intensity, and F0 movement with respect to other elements in the utterance than elements that are new in the discourse but not under contrastive focus. We argue that the phonetic differences revealed here cannot be explained in terms of systematic manipulation of pitch-accent type or phrasal boundaries, and should instead be analyzed as differences in phrase-level phonological prominence for contrastively focused and merely discourse-new elements.

Prosodic focus in English vs. French: A scope account

“…See Wagner (2012a) for discussion. 10 Some prior studies argue for separate notions of focus and givenness marking (e.g., Reinhart 2006;Katz & Selkirk 2011), but whether this complexity is needed remains controversial (cf. Wagner 2005;2012b).…”

Focus fronting, unexpectedness, and evaluative implicatures

“…We will assume, following Selkirk (2007) and Katz & Selkirk (2011), that "broad focus" is actually not marked by an F-feature. Note in fact that, in alternative semantics terms, when the whole proposition is in focus there is no way to constrain the shape of the proposition-level alternatives.…”

Prosodic Variation for Topic Shift and Other Functions in Local Contrasts in Conversation

“…Calhoun [2010] argues that contrastive interpretations in English are based on the comparative prominence of a given item compared to other items in the context. Katz and Selkirk [2011] characterize this comparative prominence as involving longer duration, higher intensity, and larger fundamental frequency (F 0 ) movements compared to nonfocused elements than narrow focus not leading to a contrastive interpretation. Across languages, whether phonological or phonetic characteristics are involved in the discrimination of contrastive from narrow focus, comparative prominence appears to be a common thread [cf.…”