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Institute
Sisterhood and tonal scaling
(2005)
This paper discusses central aspects of the effects of hierarchical structure on tonal scaling in intonation. The core results of a number of phonetic studies on this topic, by Ladd, by van den Berg, Gussenhoven and Rietveld, as well as experimental results of our own, are reviewed. We review the suggestions of this earlier work and argue for an addition to the theory. The principle 'The deeper the steeper' says that downstep among sister nodes is relatively larger if these sister-nodes are relatively more deeply embedded in the prosodic representation
German accent revisited
(2004)
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.
The quality of vowels in French depends to a large extent on the kind of syllables they are in. Tense vowels are often in open syllables and lax vowels in closed ones. This generalization, which has been called loi de position in the literature, is often overridden by special vowel-consonant coocurrence restrictions obscuring the generalization. The paper shows first that the admission of semi-syllables in the phonology of French explains a large number of counterexamples. Many final closing consonants on the phonetic representation can be understood as onsets of following rhymeless syllables, opening in this way the last full syllable. Arguments coming from phonotactic regularities support this analysis. The second insight of the paper is that the Optimality Theory is a good framework to account for the intricate data bearing on the relationship between vowels and syllable structure. The loi de position is an effect dubbed Emergence of the Unmarked, instantiated only in case no higher-ranking constraint renders it inactive.
Grammatik mit Widersprüchen
(2002)
Ineffability in OT
(2002)
Focus and Phrasing in French
(2001)
Alvin A. Liberman
(1999)