TY - CHAP A1 - Stavropoulou, Pepi T1 - On the status of contrast : evidence from the prosodic domain N2 - Recent models of Information Structure (IS) identify a low level contrast feature that functions within the topic and focus of the utterance. This study investigates the exact nature of this feature based on empirical evidence from a controlled read speech experiment on the prosodic realization of different levels of contrast in Modern Greek. Results indicate that only correction is truly contrastive, and that it is similarly realized in both topic and focus, suggesting that contrast is an independent IS dimension. Non default focus position is further identified as a parameter that triggers a prosodically marked rendition, similar to correction. KW - Information Structure KW - Prosody KW - Contrast KW - Correction KW - Markedness Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66066 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Féry, Caroline A1 - Drenhaus, Heiner T1 - Single prosodic phrase sentences N2 - A series of production and perception experiments investigating the prosody and well-formedness of special sentences, called Wide Focus Partial Fronting (WFPF), which consist of only one prosodic phrase and a unique initial accented argument, are reported on here. The results help us to decide between different models of German prosody. The absence of pitch height difference on the accent of the sentence speaks in favor of a relative model of prosody, in which accents are scaled relative to each other, and against models in which pitch accents are scaled in an absolute way. The results also speak for a model in which syntax, but not information structure, influences the prosodic phrasing. Finally, perception experiments show that the prosodic structure of sentences with a marked word order needs to be presented for grammaticality judgments. Presentation of written material only is not enough, and falsifies the results. KW - Prosody KW - experimental linguistics Y1 - 2008 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19371 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Asher, Nicholas A1 - Reese, Brian T1 - Intonation and discourse BT - biased questions N2 - This paper surveys a range of constructions in which prosody affects discourse function and discourse structure.We discuss English tag questions, negative polar questions, and what we call “focus” questions. We postulate that these question types are complex speech acts and outline an analysis in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) to account for the interactions between prosody and discourse. KW - Bias KW - Intonation KW - Prosody KW - Complex Speech Acts KW - Negative KW - Polar Questions KW - Tag Questions KW - SDRT Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19399 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Féry, Caroline A1 - Herbst, Laura ED - Ishihara, Shinichiro ED - Schmitz, Michaela ED - Schwarz, Anne T1 - German sentence accent revisited JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - Results of a production experiment on the placement of sentence accent in German are reported. The hypothesis that German fulfills some of the most widely accepted rules of accent assignment— predicting focus domain integration—was only partly confirmed. Adjacency between argument and verb induces a single accent on the argument, as recognized in the literature, but interruption of this sequence by a modifier often induces remodeling of the accent pattern with a single accent on the modifier. The verb is rarely stressed. All models based on linear alignment or adjacency between elements belonging to a single accent domain fail to account for this result. A cyclic analysis of prosodic domain formation is proposed in an optimality-theoretic framework that can explain the accent pattern. Japanese wh-questions always exhibit focus intonation (FI). Furthermore, the domain of FI exhibits a correspondence to the wh-scope. I propose that this phonology-semantics correspondence is a result of the cyclic computation of FI, which is explained under the notion of Multiple Spell-Out in the recent Minimalist framework. The proposed analysis makes two predictions: (1) embedding of an FI into another is possible; (2) (overt) movement of a wh-phrase to a phase edge position causes a mismatch between FI and wh-scope. Both predictions are tested experimentally, and shown to be borne out. KW - Prosody KW - Syntax KW - Information structure Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8273 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 1 SP - 43 EP - 75 ER -