Prosodic (non-)realisation of broad, narrow and contrastive focus in Hungarian: a production and a perception study

Abstract

In languages with variable focus positions, prominent elements tend to be emphasised by prosodic cues (e.g. English). If a language prefers a given prosodic pattern, i.e. sentence-final nuclear accents, like Spanish, the prosodic realisation of broad focus might not differ from that of narrow and contrastive focus. The relevance of prosodic focus marking was tested in Hungarian were focus typically appears in front of the finite verb. Prosodic cues such as f0 maximum, f0 peak alignment, segment duration and post-verbal deaccentuation were tested in an experiment with read question and answer sequences. While narrow and contrastive focus triggered post-verbal deaccentuation, none of the gradual measures distinguished focus types consistently from each other. A subsequent perception experiment was conducted in which the same sentences without postverbal units were to be judged for their naturalness. F0 maximum, f0 peak alignment and accent duration were manipulated. Naturalness scores revealed a sequence narrow > contrastive > broad focus, i.e. a preference for narrow focus contexts compared to contrastive and broad focus ones, while the manipulated prosodic parameters had no effect on the scores. It is concluded that prosodic focus marking in Hungarian is optional and pragmatic rather than grammatical and syntax-related.

The syntax and prosody of the post-verbal domain in Hungarian

“…In terms of parametric cues associated with the accented syllables Mády (2015) did not find an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest that pre-verbal focus is differentiated prosodically from a non-focused item in the same position. What she did find however was that contrastive focus did differ from non-contrastive and non-focused items, namely in two parameters: contrastive foci were preceded by topics whose accents had earlier f0 maxima peaks and latter f0 minima as well as having longer durations in their accented syllables.…”

“…With regards to the post-verbal elements, there was a difference between neutral sentences and those with a pre-verbal focus: post-focally there was a higher degree of deaccentuation of constituents, about 50% as compared to the 32% in neutral sentences. From this Mády (2015) concludes that post-focal accent deletion, as proposed by Kálmán & Nádasdy (1994) can best be characterised as a tendency and not a rule.…”

“…Further more, the accented syllables of the foci themselves showed a later alignement of f0 maxima, resulting in a latter realisation of the fall of the pitch contour. Besides this difference, Mády (2015) did not find any other cues that would differentiate between (non-contrastive) foci and non-focused items. Mády (2015) also reported the results of a perception experiment where the effects of f0 maxima height and alignment as well as duration of the accented syllables of focused items were investigated in terms of naturalness judgments with broad focused, narrow focused and contrastive focused target sentences.…”

“…Kiss (2002) and has also been shown experimentally Surányi et al (2012); Szalontai et al (2016). Although I have indicated that there is an accent on the topic, it has been suggested by Kálmán & Nádasdy (1994) that this accent is optional, an observation that has been experimentally examined by a number of recent studies (Genzel et al, 2015;Mády, 2015).…”

“…Note that the accent on the post-verbal constituent has been marked with a question mark. This is meant to indicate that there is disagreement in the literature regarding the nature of these accents, some suggest that constituents following focus are deaccented (Kálmán & Nádasdy, 1994), while others argue that these accents if present are at a different hierarchical level than pre-verbal accents, a suggestion that applies in (47) as well as in (46), meanwhile recent experimental evidence seems to suggest that decantation post-focally is an optional tendency rather than a strict rule based operation (Genzel et al, 2015;Mády, 2015).…”