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 <i>wh</i>-questions always exhibit focus intonation (FI). Furthermore,
the domain of FI exhibits a correspondence to the <i>wh</i>-scope. I
propose that this phonology-semantics correspondence is a result of
the cyclic computation of FI, which is explained under the notion of
<i>Multiple Spell-Out</i> 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 <i>wh</i>-phrase to a phase edge position
causes a mismatch between FI and <i>wh</i>-scope. Both predictions are
tested experimentally, and shown to be borne out.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:Potsdam/oai:kobv.de-opus-ubp:827 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Féry, Caroline, Herbst, Laura |
| Contributors | Ishihara, Shinichiro, Schmitz, Michaela, Schwarz, Anne (eds.), Sonderforschungsbereich 632 Informationsstruktur <Potsdam> |
| Publisher | Universität Potsdam, Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät. Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |
| Source Sets | Potsdam University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632. - Vol. 1 |
| Rights | http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/doku/urheberrecht.php |
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