Correction by Focus: Cleft Constructions and the Cross-Linguistic Variation in Phonological Form.

ABSTRACT: A challenging issue of cross-linguistic variation is that the same syntactic construction may appear in different arrays of contexts depending on language. For instance, cleft constructions appear with contrastive focus in English, but in a larger array of contexts in French. A part of the cross-linguistic variation may be due to prosodic differences, since prosodic possibilities determine the array of focus structures that can be mapped onto one and the same syntactic configuration. In the present study, we compare languages with flexible nuclear-accent placement (English, German), with languages that do not use this prosodic strategy (French, Mandarin Chinese). In a speech production experiment, we examine the prosodic realization of contrastive focus and identify prosodic reflexes of fo

SUBMITTER: Greif M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8666418 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature