Prosodic marking of narrow focus across varieties of South African English

Zerbian, Sabine

doi:10.1075/eww.34.1.02zer

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Research has shown that learner and contact varieties of South African English show a complex pattern of variation in the prosodic realization of narrow focus in modified noun phrases of the type blue star (cf. [6]). The following varieties have been investigated:…”

Section: Narrow Focus Marking In Varieties Of South African Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Markedness in the prosody of contact varieties of South African English

Zerbian

2012

Speech Prosody 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It has been widely observed in the literature that not only learner varieties but also contact varieties differ in their prosody from the standard variety. The article aims at providing a unified account to the linguistic variation in prosodic focus marking found across learner and contact varieties of the same language, South African English. The notion of markedness allows singling out prosodic focus marking as a likely target of linguistic change given its crosslinguistic complexity in sentence accent systems.

show abstract

Section: Narrow Focus Marking In Varieties Of South African Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A semi-spontaneous elicited-production task was carried out (cf. [6]), replicating the picture description task in [12]. Participants had to name pictures depicting coloured objects.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Markedness in the prosody of contact varieties of South African English

Zerbian

2012

Speech Prosody 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Zerbian (2015a) has shown that it is difficult to acquire and seems less likely to be found in contact varieties. In her study of Black South African English, Zerbian (2013Zerbian ( , 2015b finds no evidence that f0 and intensity are significantly affected by focus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Are focus and givenness prosodically marked in Kinyarwanda and Rwandan English?

Hamlaoui

Szendrői

Engelmann³

2021

SPILPLUS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper concentrates on whether systematic variations in pitch, intensity, and duration can be observed as a function of the focused or discourse-given status of a constituent in Kinyarwanda (Guthrie code JD.61), and a relatively recent variety of "New English" in contact with this Bantu language. Kinyarwanda is a tone language, in which the information-structural notion of focus has been reported to be expressed through changes in word order, with focus appearing clause-finally (Kimenyi 1988, Ndayiragije 1999, Ngoboka 2016. In contrast, Standard English is well-known for the prosodic boost associated with narrowly focused words and the prosodic reduction of post-focal items. Crosslinguistically, the prosodic expression of focus and givenness is progressively being considered a marked feature. Zerbian (2015a) predicts that it should not be found in a second language or a contact variety if it is not already present in the first language of a speaker or a group of speakers. Our study finds no evidence that information focus, exhaustive focus, or givenness systematically affect the prosody of Kinyarwanda. We also find no systematic effect of information structure in the variety of English spoken by our Rwandan participants, confirming that this is probably an area of English that is difficult to acquire.

show abstract

“…In addition, recent studies have shown that contact between typologically distinct languages may give rise to different varieties, each with its own prosodic system, as for example, in post-colonial varieties of English and French (Gut, 2005; Payne & Maxwell, 2018; Zerbian, 2013). All in all, the literature gives support to the idea that ongoing language contact as experienced by bilingual and L2 speakers results in intonational variation and change, giving rise to novel patterns that may combine elements from both contextual languages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Echoes of Past Contact: Venetian Influence on Cretan Greek Intonation

Baltazani¹,

Coleman

Passoni

et al. 2022

Lang Speech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Prosodic aspects of cross-linguistic contact are under-researched, especially past contact that has subsequently ceased. In this paper, we investigate declarative and polar question tunes of contemporary Cretan Greek, a regional variety of Greek whose speakers were in contact with Venetian speakers during the four and half centuries of Venetian rule on the island, from 1204 to 1669. The F0 contours of the Cretan tunes and alignment of peaks and troughs of interest with the nuclear vowel are compared to the corresponding tunes in Venetian dialect and Venetian Italian and to those in Athenian (Standard) Greek, which are used as control. The data (1610 declarative utterances and 698 polar questions) were drawn from natural speech corpora based on pragmatic criteria: broad focus for declaratives, broad focus, and information-seeking interpretation for polar questions. The pitch contour shapes of the tunes are modeled using polynomial basis functions, and the F0 alignment points are determined analytically. The results show the robustness of contact effects almost three and a half centuries after regular contact ceased and indicate that the shapes of the F0 contours of Cretan and Venetian declarative and polar question tunes are similar. In addition, Cretan alignment patterns are similar to Venetian and significantly different from Athenian. Insights are gained from research into how long prosodic characteristics may persist in a recipient language—decades or even centuries after the cessation of contact.

show abstract

Prosodic marking of narrow focus across varieties of South African English

Cited by 10 publications

References 12 publications

Markedness in the prosody of contact varieties of South African English

Markedness in the prosody of contact varieties of South African English

Are focus and givenness prosodically marked in Kinyarwanda and Rwandan English?

Echoes of Past Contact: Venetian Influence on Cretan Greek Intonation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About