<OT> New Posting: ROA-700

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 700-1204

Focus Projection and Prosodic Prominence in Nested Foci

Vieri Samek-Lodovici <ucljvsl at ucl.ac.uk>
Caroline Féry <Caroline at Féry>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=700


Abstract:
This paper investigates prosodic exceptions to rightmost
stress in English nested foci. We concentrate on sentences
involving discourse-novel material, where the absence of
rightmost stress cannot follow from the discourse-given
status of the relevant rightmost constituent. We show that
these cases cannot be accounted for by an analysis directly
linking pitch accents to focus projections via F-marking
as proposed in Selkirk (1995) and Schwarzschild (1999).
Rather they follow from the optimality theoretic interaction
of the constraints governing the prosodic expression of
discourse status with the constraints governing the location
of prosodic prominence within prosodic phrases.

Comments: 
Keywords: focus, focus-projection, prosody, pitch-accents, nested-foci
Areas: Focus-Prosody Interface, Phonology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=700