Pitch accent scaling on given, new and focused constituents in German

Féry, Caroline; Kügler, Frank

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2008.05.001

Cited by 175 publications

(173 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The difference may be related to the 'transparency' of the idiom, but as remarked in footnote 14, this does not characterize the splitting potential of German idioms in general (Horn 2003). Selkirk (1995) and Kratzer and Selkirk (2007) argue that accents are obligatorily distributed on all arguments that are not discourse given (for supporting experimental evidence on German, see Truckenbrodt 2004 andKügler 2008). Transitive verbs in wide focus constructions, on the other hand, are unaccented (see also Jacobs 1999; Wagner 2005, among others).…”

Section: Formal Aspects Of Sffmentioning

confidence: 99%

Left peripheral focus: mismatches between syntax and information structure

Fanselow

Lenertová

2010

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

115

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In Czech, German, and many other languages, part of the semantic focus of the utterance can be moved to the left periphery of the clause. The main generalization is that only the leftmost accented part of the semantic focus can be moved. We propose that movement to the left periphery is generally triggered by an unspecific edge feature of C (Chomsky 2008) and its restrictions can be attributed to requirements of cyclic linearization, modifying the theory of cyclic linearization developed by Fox and Pesetsky (2005). The crucial assumption is that structural accent is a direct consequence of being linearized at merge, thus it is indirectly relevant for (locality restrictions on) movement. The absence of structural accent correlates with givenness. Given elements may later receive (topic or contrastive) accents, which accounts for fronting in multiple focus/contrastive topic constructions. Without any additional assumptions, the model can account for movement of pragmatically unmarked elements to the left periphery ('formal fronting', Frey 2005). Crucially, the analysis makes no reference at all to concepts of information structure in the syntax, in line with the claim of Chomsky (2008) that UG specifies no direct link between syntax and information structure.

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Section: Formal Aspects Of Sffmentioning

confidence: 99%

Left peripheral focus: mismatches between syntax and information structure

Fanselow

Lenertová

2010

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

115

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“…Nuclear accents are typically easier to perceive and to categorize, while prenuclear accents are generally less prominent. What is more, prenuclear accents are often placed by speaker for purely rhythmic reasons (e.g., Féry & Kügler, 2008), so they may play a lesser role in the signalling of pragmatic aspects such as information status marking. As will become clear later, the speakers produced more accentuation types than the ones suggested, so that the entire GToBI set of pitch accents and boundary tones was required for annotation.…”

Section: Prosodic Annotationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information status marking in spontaneous vs. read speech in story-telling tasks – Evidence from intonation analysis using GToBI

Ruiter

2015

Journal of Phonetics

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A B S T R A C TTwo studies investigated whether speaking mode influences the way German speakers mark the information status of discourse referents in nuclear position. In Study 1, speakers produced narrations spontaneously on the basis of picture stories in which the information status of referents (new, accessible and given) was systematically varied. In Study 2, speakers saw the same pictures, but this time accompanied by text to be read out. Clear differences were found depending on speaking mode: In spontaneous speech, speakers always accented new referents. They did not use different pitch accent types to differentiate between new and accessible referents, nor did they always deaccent given referents. In addition, speakers often made use of low pitch accents in combination with high boundary tones to indicate continuity. In contrast to this, read speech was characterized by low boundary tones, consistent deaccentuation of given referents and the use of H +L* and H +!H* accents, for both new and accessible referents. The results are discussed in terms of the function of intonational features in communication. It is argued that reading intonation is not comparable to intonation in spontaneous speech, and that this has important consequences also for our choice of methodology in child language acquisition research.

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“…Alternatively, the type of pitch accent employed may differ between focused and defocused constituents (e.g., Baumann et al, 2006 for German). The type of pitch accent may also be determined by the distinction between narrow focus and broad focus, though this distinction is not always clearly marked (e.g., Baumann et al, 2006;Kügler, 2008;Féry & Kügler, 2008 for German). The gradience is related to duration (e.g., Baumann et al, 2006 for German) and scaling or alignment in F 0 (e.g., earlier peak in narrow focus in American English, Xu & Xu, 2005;Baumann et al, 2006 for Standard German).…”

Section: Prosodic Marking Of Narrow Focus Across Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic Marking of Narrow Focus in Seoul Korean

Nolan

2017

Laboratory Phonology

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This paper explores prosodic marking of narrow (corrective) focus in Seoul Korean. Korean lacks lexical stress and it has a phonologized association between the Accentual Phrase (AP) initial segment and intonation. In the experiment, 4 speakers read sentences including a two-item list which were designed to elicit either an L or H AP-initial tone. The durational variations, the pitch events at prosodic boundaries, and F 0 span in 32 sentences read neutrally and 64 sentences read with one of the items under focus were analyzed. The results show that the focused constituent consistently initiates a new prosodic phrase. In comparison to the neutrally spoken or defocused counterpart, the focused constituent was more likely to be realized as an Intonational Phrase (IP) in some contexts. Bitonal IP boundary tones were more likely to occur under focus than monotonal tones. In addition, in focused constituents, durational expansion particularly at the phrase-edges, expansion in F 0 span, and raising of the phrase-initial pitch were observed. On the other hand, defocused constituents were not phonetically reduced compared to the neutral counterparts. The results imply that the phonetic cues spreading over the focused constituent complement the exaggerated prosodic boundaries.

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Pitch accent scaling on given, new and focused constituents in German

Cited by 175 publications

References 23 publications

Left peripheral focus: mismatches between syntax and information structure

Left peripheral focus: mismatches between syntax and information structure

Information status marking in spontaneous vs. read speech in story-telling tasks – Evidence from intonation analysis using GToBI

Prosodic Marking of Narrow Focus in Seoul Korean

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