Acoustic Correlates of Focus Marking in Czech and Polish

Language and Speech
Fatima HamlaouiMichael Wagner

Abstract

Languages vary in the type of contexts that affect prosodic prominence. This paper reports on a production study investigating how different types of foci influence prosody in Polish and Czech noun phrases. The results show that in both languages, focus and givenness are marked prosodically, with pitch and intensity as the main acoustic correlates. Like Germanic languages, Polish and Czech patterns show prosodic focus marking in a broad range of contexts and differ in this regard from other fixed-word-stress languages such as French. This suggests that (a) Polish and Czech are similar to Germanic languages and are unlike Romance languages in marking a variety of types of focus prosodically; (b) there is no close correlation between fixed word stress and lack of prosodic focus marking because Polish, which has fixed stress on the penult, shows prosodic focus marking for all types of focus; and (c) there is no straightforward relationship between flexible word order and whether focus and givenness are prosodically marked, contrary to earlier claims, because both Czech and Polish, with their relatively flexible word order, are more similar to English than Romance languages.

References

Jan 1, 1982·Phonetica·S G Nooteboom, J M Terken
Sep 15, 2005·The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America·G KochanskiB Rosner
Jan 12, 2007·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Andrea LörinczGábor Tamás
Jan 4, 2008·Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health·Onur HamzaogluErce Sevin
Feb 3, 2009·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Tsai-Wen ChenDetlev Schild
Oct 26, 2012·Language and Speech·Frank Kügler, Susanne Genzel
Jan 10, 2014·Journal of Memory and Language·Dale J BarrHarry J Tily

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Software Mentioned

- Aligner
lmerTest
PRAAT
lme4
Prosodylab
R

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