Variation in the prosody of focus in head- and head/edge-prominence languages

Burdin, Rachel Steindel; Phillips-Bourass, Sara Catherine; Turnbull, Rory; Yasavul, Murat; Clopper, Cynthia G.; Tonhauser, Judith

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2014.10.001

Cited by 29 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This strategy was most frequently found in L2s' speech. As post-focal deaccenting is a strategy that is commonly used in English (Burdin et al, 2015;Ito & Speer, 2008), verb deaccenting after a focused subject found in the L2 data is likely to be due to influence from English. The HSs also used this cue, but to a lesser degree.…”

Section: Variability In Focus Marking Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Spanish and English differ particularly in pitch contour. In English, words in a non-final position of a declarative sentence usually bear a high pitch accent (H*), but when these words are focused, they are generally expressed with a rising pitch accent (L+H*) (Beckman, Hirschberg, & Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2005) and the following non-focused words tend to be deaccented, lending prosodic prominence to the focused words (Burdin et al, 2015;Ito & Speer, 2008). In Spanish, while there is a large variation in pitch accent types (Kim & Avelino, 2003;Martín Butragueño, 2005, 2006, non-focused words in this position are usually produced with a rising pitch movement that continues throughout the stressed syllable until the syllable(s) that follow(s) (L+>H*) (Estebas-Vilaplana, 2007;Prieto, van Santen, & Hirschberg, 1995).…”

Section: Focus In Spanish and Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Heritage speakers’ use of prosodic strategies in focus marking in Spanish

Kim

2018

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Aims and objectives: The present study investigates how focus is prosodically realized by Spanish heritage speakers, and whether they show different patterns from Spanish monolinguals and English second language (L2) learners of Spanish. Design: Prompt questions were auditorily presented to elicit participants’ production of sentences with different scopes and locations of focus. Data and analysis: Relative prosodic prominence between focused and non-focused constituents, as well as tonal alignment, were acoustically analyzed and compared across the groups. Additional strategies that participants used are also presented. Findings: The results revealed that all three groups used multiple strategies, both prosodic and non-prosodic, to express focus in Spanish. However, the specific cues that were used differed in each group. Monolinguals and L2 learners clearly differed from each other in that the former preferred non-prosodic strategies (e.g., cleft constructions, complementizer que ‘that’), while the latter used various prosodic strategies (e.g., relative prosodic prominence, early peak alignment, post-focal deaccenting). Heritage speakers, on the other hand, used a mix of strategies that were observed in both monolinguals’ and L2 learners’ speech. Originality: Prosody is an understudied area in heritage language research. This is one of few studies that examined Spanish heritage speakers’ use of prosodic cues in the realization of focus in Spanish and the first to extensively analyze various acoustic correlates of focus produced by Spanish heritage speakers. Implication: The findings suggest that heritage speakers are flexible in their use of linguistic strategies as they are able to extract resources from their two language systems.

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Section: Variability In Focus Marking Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Focus In Spanish and Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heritage speakers’ use of prosodic strategies in focus marking in Spanish

Kim

2018

International Journal of Bilingualism

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“…Similar patterns are reported for K'iche' in Can Pixabaj & England (), but cf. Yasavul (), Burdin et al (). Velleman () discusses interactions between in situ focus and prosody in Kichee', arguing that prosody cannot be the sole determiner of focus for post‐verbal subjects; see also Henderson ().…”

Section: Phrasal Prosody: the Word And Abovementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dedicated studies of intonation in Mayan languages include Larsen & Pike (1949), Berinstein (1991), Nielsen (2005), Shklovsky (2011), Burdin et al (2015), among other work already cited above. Pye (1983Pye ( , 1992 argues that final stress and intonation play an important role in language acquisition in K'iche'.…”

Section: Phrasal Prosody: the Word And Above 71 Intonation And Phramentioning

confidence: 99%

Mayan phonology

Bennett

2016

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“…The notation is also useful in clarifying points of typological variation. Some languages appear not to mark focus prosodically, like certain African languages (Güldemann et al, 2015), or the Mayan language K'iche' (Burdin et al, 2015). Do these lack ∼ altogether, or do they just lack the phonological means to encode the scope of ∼?…”

Section: Using Rooth's Notation As a "Normal Form"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic Focus

Wagner¹

2020

Preprint

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This chapter provides an introduction to the phenomenon of prosodic focus, as well as to the theory of Alternative Semantics. Alternative Semantics provides an insightful account of what prosodic focus means, and gives us a notation that can help with better characterizing focus-related phenomena and the terminology used to describe them. We can also translate theoretical ideas about focus and givenness into this notation to facilitate a comparison between frameworks. The discussion will partly be structured by an evaluation of the theories of Givenness, the theory of Relative Givenness, and Unalternative Semantics, but we will cover a range of other ideas and proposals in the process. The chapter concludes with a discussion of phonological issues, and of association with focus.

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Variation in the prosody of focus in head- and head/edge-prominence languages

Cited by 29 publications

References 33 publications

Heritage speakers’ use of prosodic strategies in focus marking in Spanish

Heritage speakers’ use of prosodic strategies in focus marking in Spanish

Mayan phonology

Prosodic Focus

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