The syntax and prosody of focus in Northern Amis (Formosan)

This study examines the interaction of contrastive focus-marking with nominalization in bisected contrastive focus constructions of Alto Perené, a Kampa Arawak language of Peru. It also investigates morphosyntactic means of contrastive focus-marking in two neighboring Kampa languages, Ashéninka Pichis and Ashaninka Tambo. The languages are shown to employ various focus-marking strategies. The Alto Perené polar (truth value) focus construction shows a preference for nominalizing a lexical verb. In Ashaninka Tambo, the expression of polar and modal operator focus (the latter attested in negated clauses) does not require nominalization of the lexical verb, but in clefted content and polar questions and airmative declarative clauses, nominalization is mandatory for the purpose of argument focusing. In Ashéninka Pichis, the argument focus-marking strategies include the syntactic movement of the focus constituent to the preverbal focus position and either an elision of the subject index on the verb, or inflecting the verb for stative aspect.

ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 2006

This paper presents a sketch of the prosodic, syntactic and morphological means of expressing focus in Chitumbuka, an underdescribed Bantu language of Malawi. The chief prosodic correlate of focus is boundary narrowing – rephrasing conditioned by focus – which is used not only to signal in situ focus but also in syntactic and morphological focus constructions. Of theoretical importance is the fact that rephrasing does not lend culminative prominence to the focused constituent. Although Chitumbuka has culminative sentential stress, its position remains fixed at the right edge of the clause, independent of the position of focus. This makes Chitumbuka a challenge for theories of focus prosody which claim that the focused constituent must have culminative sentential prominence.

International Journal of American Linguistics, 2018

The present study analyses the syntax and prosody of contrastive focus in K’ichee’ according to the bilingual language dominance of the speakers. Results of a production task reveal that although speakers use all of the syntactic constructions mentioned in the literature, speakers that are less dominant in K’ichee’ use in situ constructions at a higher rate. The results of the acoustic analysis show that, in contrast to work on other Mayan languages, a focused constituent does not need to be moved to the preverbal, left-peripheral position in order to be prosodically prominent in K’ichee’. Furthermore, although all speakers prosodically mark a constituent for contrastive focus regardless of language dominance, the effects of language dominance on prosodic focus marking are gradient: speakers that are less dominant in K’ichee’ are more likely to mark contrastive focus to a greater prosodic degree than those that are more dominant in K’ichee’. Available at: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/697585?journalCode=ijal

2010

This paper provides an overview of the literature on the syntax and prosody of focus in some of the Bantu languages (Kimatuumbi, Chimwiini, Chichewa) and in Italian, and it argues that. despite their typological distance, they share much in common with respect to both the syntax and prosody of focus: 1) both language types have an active low Focus position (Belletti 2004, Aboh 2007) 2) the Focus position triggers the insertion of a strong prosodic boundary, which gives rise to a “ripple effect” in that phrases to the right of Foc are similarly flanked by a comparable prosodic boundary. The view outlined here argues in favor of a stronger syntax-prosody connection than is generally recognized in current approaches

Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages, 2018

In this paper, we look into the interaction between focus and prosody in Tagalog. In this language, for most focus conditions regular correspondences between syntax and information structure are observed: canonical constructions are used for sentence focus and predicate focus conditions, while pseudocleft constructions are used for argument focus conditions. However, some wh-questions, in particular targeting non-agent arguments, can be answered by means of canonical constructions as well as pseudocleft constructions. In this experimental study, we examine production data in order to test how Tagalog speakers prosodically distinguish canonical sentences associated with different focus structures. The results reveal that F0 cues and intensity consistently differentiate focused conditions from all-old utterances throughout the entire sentence. However, the distinct focus conditions are not prosodically differentiated. As for the argument focus condition, there may be dura-tional effects applying to the phrase in narrow focus, but this needs further confirmation.

ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 2006

Although verb forms encoding focus were recorded in various Bantu languages during the twentieth century it was not until the late 1970's that they became the centre of serious attention, starting with the work of Hyman and Watters. In the last decade this attention has grown. While focus can be expressed variously, this paper concentrates largely on its morphological, partly on its tonal expression. On the basis of morphological and tonal behaviour, it identifies four blocks of languages, representing less than a third of all Bantu languages: those with metatony, those with a binary constituent contrast between verb ("disjunctive") and post-verbal ("conjunctive") focus, those with a three-way contrast, and those with verb initial /ni-/. Following Güldemann's lead, it is shown there is a fairly widespread grammaticalisation path whereby focus markers may come to encode progressive aspect, then present tense. Many Bantu languages today have a pre-stem morp...

Proceedings of 11th International Conference of Experimental Linguistics, 2020

The prosody of verbal word forms in the narrative utterances of the Altai language is under consideration in the article. In this work, in addition to the acoustic analysis in the Praat program, we took into account the subjective perception of native speakers. In the simple statements the intonation declines on the predicate when realizing the topic of the utterance. The focus of the utterance may be expressed by pitch and intensity peak.

2006

Papers on Information Structure in African Languages, ed. by Ines Fiedler and Anne Schwarz.ZASPIL-ZAS Papers in Linguistics 46: 185-209., 2006

Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, 2019

Languages use a variety of means to realise informational structure categories like topicalisation and focus. The interaction between prosody and focus realisation strategies was examined in Nafsan, a Southern Oceanic language of Vanuatu, in a series of tasks that were designed to explore prosodic realisation of informational and contrastive focus on nouns that were subjects or objects in mini-dialogues where word-order was manipulated. All speakers produced utterance-initial or utterance-final focal elements with a major pitch movement associated with the focused noun (subject or object). Focused nouns were also realised with a wider pitch and often realised in their own prosodic phrase compared to the same item in non-focal contexts. There was also significant syllable lengthening at the right edge of in-focus words. In utterance-initial contexts, post-focal material in Nafsan was almost always produced in a relatively compressed pitch range and there was evidence of de-phrasing of non-focal nouns regardless of utterance position, suggesting prosodic phrasing patterns similar to other languages with edge-marking prominence.