Prenuclear L^∗+H Activates Alternatives for the Accented Word.

ABSTRACT: Previous processing studies have shown that constituents that are prosodically marked as focus lead to an activation of alternatives. We investigate the processing of constituents that are prosodically marked as contrastive topics. In German, contrastive topics are prosodically realized by prenuclear L^∗+H accents. Our study tests (a) whether prenuclear accents (as opposed to nuclear accents) are able to activate contrastive alternatives, (b) whether they do this in the same way as constituents prosodically marked as focus with nuclear accents do, which is important for semantic modeling, and (c) whether the activation of alternatives is caused by pitch accent type (prenuclear L^∗+H as contrastive accent vs. prenuclear L+H^∗ as non-contrastive accent) o

SUBMITTER: Braun B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6769128 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature