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Second occurrence focus and the acoustics of prominence
Author(s) -
Jonathan Howell
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the journal of the acoustical society of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.619
H-Index - 187
eISSN - 1520-8524
pISSN - 0001-4966
DOI - 10.1121/1.4787465
Subject(s) - focus (optics) , linguistics , duration (music) , noun , mathematics , balance (ability) , psychology , syntagmatic analysis , acoustics , physics , philosophy , neuroscience , optics
Partee (1991) challenged the significance of the observation that certain adverbs (e.g., only) reliably associate with phonologically prominent words to truth‐conditional effect, noting second occurrence (i.e., repeated or given) focus (SOF) appears to lack a phonological realization. Rooth (1996), Bartels (2004), Beaver et al. (2004), Jaeger (2004), and Fry and Ishihara (2005) argued that, while not intonationally prominent, an SOF word can be marked by increased duration and/or increased rms intensity. An acoustic study of verb‐noun homophone pairs is reported. Three sophisticated speakers uttered five repetitions of the targets, embedded in discourses, in first occurrence (FOF), SOF, and unfocused (NF) contexts, both pre‐ and postnuclearly. Syntagmatic comparison shows a durational effect for focus and ordering in the FOF/NF case, yet only an effect of ordering in SOF/NF; similarly, an effect of spectral balance (H1‐H3) was found for FOF/NF but none for SOF/NF. Results suggest, contrary to previous ass...

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