German intonational Patterns 9783111677606, 9783484302853

Table of contents :
Acknowledgement
Introduction
Chapter 1: Focus and the formation of Focus Domains
Overview
1.1 The semantics of focus
1.2 The syntax of focus
1.3 Phonology of focus
1.4 Nuclear accent assignment
1.5 Summary
Chapter 2: The tone-sequence analysis of intonation and the tonal correlates of phrasing
2.1 Pierrehumbert's proposal
2.2 Autosegmental association
2.3 Tonal phrasing
2.4 Conclusion
Chapter 3: Nuclear tones
Overview
3.1 Four nuclear contours
3.2 Stylization and early peak
3.3 Meanings of tones and tunes
Chapter 4: Prenuclear tones
4.1 Tones in sequence
4.2 Linking of tones
4.3 Hat pattern
4.4 Summary
Chapter 5: Range, downstep, declination
5.1 Fundamental frequency as a gradient variable and as a correlate of phonological tones
5.2 Downstepped accents
5.3 The representation of downstep
Summary
References
Appendix

Citation preview

Linguistische Arbeiten

285

Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Peter Blumenthal, Herbert E. Brekle, Gerhard Heibig, Hans Jürgen Heringer, Heinz Vater und Richard Wiese

Caroline Fery

German Intonational Patterns

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1993

Pour mesfils, Alain et Tom, et pour Coco, mon amie.

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Fery, Caroline: German intonational patterns / Caroline F6ry - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1993 (Linguistische Arbeiten ; 285) NE:GT ISBN 3-484-30285-2

ISSN 0344-6727

© Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Tübingen 1993 Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Druck: Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt Einband: Hugo Nadele, Nehren

Contents

Chapter l : Focus and the formation of Focus Domains ...................................... 13 Overview ............................................................................................................................... 13 1.1 The semantics of focus ........................................................................................... 1 5 1.1.1 Disambiguation of focus .............................................................................. 1 5 1.1. 2 New and given information ....................................................................... 16 1.1.3 Relational focus-background-division ............... .................................... 18 1.1.4 Pragmatic interpretation of focus .......................................................... 20 1.2 The syntax of focus .................................................................................................. 21 1.2.1 Focussing part of a lexical constituent ................................................ 23 1.2.2 Verum Focus..................................................................................................23 1.2.3 Neutral accent............................................................................. .................. 26 1.3 Phonology of focus .................................................................................................... 30 1.3.1 Integration vs. isolation of Focus Domains: complementary distribution...............................................................................31 1.3.2 Integration vs. isolation of Focus Domains: alternation position.................................................................................................40 1 .4 Nuclear accent assignment...................................................................................44 1.5 Summary.......................................................................................................................48 Chapter 2: The tone-sequence analysis of intonation and the tonal correlates of phrasing. .................................................................................................... 49 2.1 Rerrehumbert's proposal.....................................................................................49 2.2 Autosegmental association....................................................................................57 2.3 Tonal phrasing...........................................................................................................59 2.3.1 Nuclear accents and focus structure .................................................... 62 2.3.2 Phonological representation of the tonal structure ........................ 71 2.4 Conclusion....................................................................................................................79 Chapter 3: Nuclear tones ............................................................................................... 81 Overview...............................................................................................................................81

VI

3.1 Four nuclear contours 3.1.1 Simple falling tone: H*L 3.1.2 Simple rising tone: L*H 3.1.3 Fall-rise: H* L H% 3.1.4 Rise-fall: L* H L. 3.1.5 Summary. 3.2Stylizationandeariypeak 3.2.1 Vocatives and stylized contours 3.2.2 Early peak: H H*L 3.3 Meanings of tones and tunes

81 82 85 91 93 96 96 97 103 ...106

Chapter 4: Frenuclear tones

113

4.1 Tones in sequence 4.2 Linking of tones 4.3 Hat pattern 4.3.1 Topic accent and other prenuclear rising accents 4.3.1.1 Topic 4.3.1.2 Contrast (and gapping) 4.3.1.3 Referential vs. predicative NPs 4.3.1.4 Negative scope ambiguities 4.3.1.5 Other contexts for the hat pattern 4.3.1.6 Meaning of the prenuclear rising tone and comparison with the fall-rise in English 4.3.2 Two different hat patterns 4.4 Summary

113 116 128 129 129 136 139 141 143 145 149 153

Chapter 5: Range, downstep, declination

155

5.1 Fundamental frequency as a gradient variable and as a correlate of phonological tones 5.2 Downstepped accents 5.3 The representation of downstep

155 157 161

Summaty.

171

References

173

Appendix:

181

Acknowledgement Several people have supported me in one way or another. The two most helpful were Ede Zimmermann, as a friend, linguist, informant and corrector of my English and Arnim von Stechow, who trusted in me over all these years and who shares his vast (and not only linguistic) knowledge with everyone. Apart from these two, many other people have encouraged me in various ways: Jochen Geilfuß, Carlos Gussenhoven, Julia Hirschberg, Tilman Höhle, Inga Kohlhof, Bob Ladd, Karl-Heinz Ramers, Lisa Selkirk, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Heinz Vater, Susanne Winkler and Dieter Wunderlich commented on parts of a previous version. Of course, all mistakes are mine. Betty Couper-Kuhlen gave me some good ideas, Eva Gärding sent me supporting letters, Maria Schorpp conducted various experiments and gave me a room to sleep in. I thank them all. A first version of this book (Fery 1989) was written as part of the Konstanz Intonation Project, supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft from 1984 until 1988. I would like to thank the members of this project, especially Arnim von Stechow (again) and Susanne Uhmann, for helping me to expose and clarify many aspects of intonation. The first version was published 1989 as Arbeitspapier Nr. 9 der Fachgruppe Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Konstanz. The present revision was made in two phases. The first was during the academic year 1989-1990 that I spent as a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I profited immensely from the seminars of John McCarthy and Lisa Selkirk. Lisa Selkirk shares my interest in intonation and was kind enough to discuss with me many aspects of it, in particular the results of my research in Amherst (some of which are discussed in Chapter 2). The Department of Linguistics at Amherst was a truly stimulating place and I thank everybody who was there. The second phase began in October 1990 when I began to work on a project of the Sonderforschungsbereich 340 supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The project is directed by Hans-Bernhard Drubig and I would like to thank him, as well as the other members of the SFB 340 in Tübingen, for providing such a good environment to work in. Different parts of this work appeared as Fery (1992) Focus, Topic and Intonation in German (1992), Arbeitspapier Nr.20 des Sonderforschungsbereichs 340, Stuttgart/Tübingen. Last but not least I would like to thank Tim Coleman and Kirsten Brock for correcting my English.

Introduction This book has two aims. First, to give an account of the phonological properties of German intonation. Taking Pierrehurnbert's work for English as a point of departure, the tonal structure of German is described in a tone-sequence model. Second, to show the influence of some linguistic factors on the tonal pattern of the utterances: focusstructure, topic-comment structure, scope-inducing elements, etc. This introduction is intended to make the reader familiar with the physical reality intonation is about, namely, the fundamental frequency (Fo) contours. The so-called intonation languages, like German, English or French, realize accents as tonal movements or tones. However, in those languages, the choice of the form of the realized accents, as well as the tonal melody associated with unaccented syllables, heavily depend on discourse structures like the focus-background division of the text (Ladd 1980. Gussenhoven 1984, Jacobs 1988, Rooth 1985, von Stechow 1990), topicalization (Jacobs 1982, Krifka 1984, H hle 1991), modality (Altmann et αϊ 1989) and pragmatic factors (Ward & Hirschberg 1985, Hirschberg & Ward 1991). Consequently, a single German sentence can be assigned many different melodies, called intonational contours, and conversely, the same melody can be realized on different texts. Fig. 1 illustrates a text which has been uttered in six different ways.

θ.βββθθ
PJICH

β>

α.

TIM·

PITCH

β>

b.

Mar ia ist

nach Berlin g e f a h r e n

Tin· < » · ο )

i_B_>PITCH

c.

_Jd_a_LJ_i__lsJ Tin· < » · ο >

Fig.l ( a to c) Contours of Maria ist nach Berlin gefahren 'Maria went to Berlin.'

β.βθβθβ
P.ITCH

B>

e. \

a_ I s ^ n a c h B e r l l n

Tin·

g e f a h r e n

•8>7ITCH

Maria

Ist

nach

B e r l i n

g e f a h r e n

Flg. l (d to f) Contours of Maria isi nach. Berlin gefahren 'Maria went to Berlin.1

Fig. la is the neutral declarative contour, the 'citation form1, that is chosen if the whole sentence is understood as new. For instance, if the sentence is an answer to the question Irgendwas neues? ('Anything new?1) and if the information that Maria went to Berlin contains nothing exceptional. In this case, the accents are downstepped relative to each other: the falling accent on Berlin is on a lower pitch level than the accent on Maria, though Berlin is not perceived as less prominent than Maria. The last realized accent is called the nuclear accent. The realization of the same sentence with a marked 'topic-comment' structure or a contrastive reading leads to the contour illustrated in Fig.lb. In this case, Maria has a rising accent and the high level attained by this word holds on until the falling accent on Berlin is realized. The sentence could be continued by ...und Martin nach Hannover ('and Martin to Hanover'). This contour has been called hat pattern in the literature on Dutch and English intonation (Cohen & *t Hart 1967) and this terminology has been adopted for German as well1. The hat pattern will be discussed at different places in this book, especially in Chapter 4. Fig. Ic has an early nuclear accent: Maria is the last accent in the sentence and has the last tonal movement of any relevance. The rest of the contour is flat. This sentence can be used as an answer to the question Wer ist nach Berlin gefahren? ("Who went to Berlin?1). In a natural situation, the known context expressed by the flat part of this contour (ist nach Berlin gefahren) is usually dropped in the answer, and only the new information (Maria) is uttered. Each of the three tonal realizations just discussed has an overall falling contour: all three associate with declarative sentences. However, the same sentence can also be uttered with a rising contour: in a question, the nuclear accent is often (but not always) realized as a rise. Fig. Id, e and f are such cases. Fig.Id is parallel to Fig.Ic in that the nuclear accent is on Maria early in the sentence, and the rest of the sentence is rather flat, although, of course, there is a further difference: the postnuclear contour is at a low level in Fig.Ic and at a high level in Fig.Id. Notice that the high level attained by the rise on Maria is sustained until the end of the sentence. This sentence could be continued by Ja, Maria (und nicht Martin) ('Yes, Maria (and not Martin)'). Fig.le realizes the rising nuclear accent on Berlin. It can be continued by Ja, nach Berlin (und nicht nach Frankfurt) ('Yes, to Berlin (and not Frankfurt)'). In this contour, the flat postnuclear level is restricted to the word gefahren, but there is a high boundary tone on the last syllable of 1 Wunderlich (1991) uses the term bridge for the same pattern.

this word (a definition of boundary tone is given in Chapter 1. For the present it is enough to know that a boundary tone can be realized at the end of an intonational phrase.) Fig.If realizes the rising nuclear accent on gefahren and can be answered by Ja, gefahren (und nicht geßogen) (Yes, by car (and not by plane)'). In Fig. If there is no place for a postnuclear flat contour, since the rising accent is realized on the last word of the sentence. In such a realization, the nuclear accent and a possible high boundary tone are falling together. When the nuclear accent is relatively late in the sentence, there tend to be other, preceding, accents around, called prenuclear accents: Maria has a prenuclear accent in Fig. la, e and f, though it is more prominent in a than in e and f. Different tonal contours can also be realized on single words (Fig.2). Notice that in this case, the accent location remains the same for all contours. It is only the accent realization that varies.

-d!

•t-t

I I

I !

Fig.2 Contours of Maria.

In Fig.2 the same word is realized with four different contours: Fig.2a is realized as a declarative. It could be the neutral answer of a question like Wer ist gekommen? ('Who came?'). The tonal realization of the accent looks like the accent on Berlin in Fig. la. Fig.2b is the contour typically used in a vocative. It looks like the falling contour of Fig.2a. but the fall does not go as low as in Fig.2a: the voice does not cross the mid level of the speaker's register. Fig.2c could be a question: somebody in a room hears a noise behind a door and calls Fig.2c to make sure who it is. This accent resembles the accent on gefahren in Fig. If. Fig.2d is a vocative, like Fig.2b, but the realization involves a more complex movement than the realization in Fig.2b. The fundamental frequency falls down and then rises again. Figs.l and 2 show that, except for the accent location, the tonal realization of a sentence is independent of the lexical component and syntactic structure, since the same word or the same sentence can be realized in many different ways. Otherwise, we would expect that the melody of a a sentence would be determined by the words it contains or by its syntax. There is another sense in which intonation and syntax can be shown to be independent of each other: the same tonal contour can be realized on expressions with different syntactic structure, as shown in Fig.3.

8

j u

o

!

I

I

I

Fig.3 Fall-rise on different expressions Anna (a). Entschuldigung ('excuse me') (b). Ich weiß es nicht ( don't know1) (c) Dos Bett ist gemacht worden (The bed was made.1) (d)

In Fig.3, a fall followed by a rise is realized on four different expressions. This contour has been called fall-rise in the literature on English intonation and we will carry over this usage to German. Fig.Sa is similar to Fig.2d: it is a vocative. It can be used to call the attention of someone in the same room. The fall-rise intonation on a word like Entschuldigung (Fig.Sb) can be used as an introduction to a question. It can be said in a context like Entschuldigung, können Sie mir sagen wie ich zur Fregestraße komme? ('Excuse me, could you please tell how to get to Frege Street?'). Fig.Sc, don't know1, is used if the speaker wants to add something: ich weiß es nicht, aber frag Maria, sie muß es wissen. ( don't know, but ask Maria, she must know.'). The high pitch accent on weiß is interpreted as a focus accent, and the rise at the end of the utterance as a continuation rise, indicating that the message has not (yet) been completed. Some German fall-rise contours have the meaning Ward & Hirschberg (1985) and Hirschberg & Ward (1991) find for their English counterparts: fall-rise contours (L*+HLH% in their terminology borrowed from Pierrehumbert's work) express 'incredulity' and 'uncertainty'2. Fig.3d shows that this contour can be used in relation with any text. The sentence Dos Bett ist gemacht worden 'The bed has been made' can also be used in situations where the speaker is surprised that the bed has been made. The tonal structure does not associate with the text at random, but respects the placement of accent and the kind of pragmatic message the speaker wants to convey. The first chapter looks at one of the most obvious factors influencing intonation: the accent placement, which itself depends strongly on the focus structure, as well as other factors. It will be shown that an utterance is divided into Focus Domains, each of which is signalled by a pitch accent. Chapter 2 introduces the framework used in the subsequent chapters. The overall framework is Pierrehumbert's (1980) and Beckman & Pierrehumbert's (1986) by now traditional linear tone sequence analysis. Their model is presented in the first part of the chapter. Pierrehumbert (1980) and Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) provide the most comprehensive account of the now standard model of intonation, which is used in a slightly adapted form in the present work. Following Bolinger 2

Hirschberg & Ward 1991: 'We propose that L*+H L H% is employed to convey kick of speaker commitment to the appropriateness of a scale or scalar value evoked in the context. This lack of commitment accomodates the two general Interpretations of L*+H L H% contour discussed in the literature - the "uncertainty" interpretation |...J and the "incredulity" interpretation [...].'

10

(1958), Pierrehumbert (1980) assumes that the tonal units are morphemes of different kinds. They are represented on their own autosegmental tier and linked to the text by association principles. The second part of the chapter introduces some changes in Pierrehumbert's model in order to account for the German contours. The tonal correlates of phrasing in German are examined by taking a look at the influence of the size of Focus Domains on the nuclear and postnuclear tonal realization. It is argued that the different boundary tones Pierrehumbert has proposed for English are not obligatory in a phonological description of German final contours. In the first part of Chapter 3. a repertoire of the German nuclear tones is proposed. Setting up the tonal inventory of a language has similarities with describing the phonotactics of a language: Does one have to allow the onset /dg/ to account for Gin or Dschungel? Or rather should one consider it as too marked to count as a German syllable onset? Similarly, it is difficult to decide whether a tone involving two tonal movements is a primary morpheme of Standard German or not. However, some decisions must be made at the risk of making mistakes: what I am going to propose, then, is a tone inventory consisting of only two pitch tones, both of which can have several trail tones. In the second part of the chapter, two modifications in the realization of the nucleus will be introduced: stylization and the early peak. The term 'stylization1 has been introduced by Ladd (1978). In some contexts, for example in a call, the voice of the speaker does not cross her/his mid level. Early peak is a kind of intonation mainly used by television or radio reporters. The peak of a 'normal1 pitch accent is moved to the preceding syllable. The third part of Chapter 3 takes a look at some proposals which have been made about the meaning of individual tones. Chapter 4 introduces prenuclear tones. The first part of the chapter shows that some prenuclear realizations can be accounted for by the notion of tone linking proposed by Gussenhoven for English. In the second part, it is shown that the choice of the form of a rising or a falling prenuclear tone is largely determined by discourse-structure factors like topic-comment structure. The hat pattern and some of its functions in German will be discussed, and a comparison with the English Jail-rise will be made. The choice of a hat pattern in German is in some cases obligatory. The fall-rise in English, on the other hand, is always facultative. This makes the influence of non-phonological criteria on the tonal structure more pervasive in German than in English. Finally, in Chapter 5, it will be shown that, as in English, for two successive accents to be perceived as equally prominent, the second one

11

must be downstepped relative to the first. The choice of a downstepped accent as opposed to a non-downstepped one depends on linguistic factors like the focus structure of the utterance. Some ways of representing and explaining downstep and declination will be briefly discussed. Intonation is made up by different effects: tones, phrasing, intensity and duration coexist in all utterances. But, although intonation involves these various factors, it is only pitch that will be given consideration in the present work, whereas the other factors will largely be neglected.

Chapter 1: Focus and the formation of Focus Domains Overview In German, as in English, the most usual way of indicating a focus of information is by accenting one or several constituents. Topicalization, clefting, and left dislocation are other means to the same end (Rochemont & Culicover 1990. Drubig 1992, 1992a). Only the accent device will be considered in the present investigation. Thus, the following principle is assumed to hold: (1) A focussed constituent is ordinarily signalled by a pitch accent. Conversely, a pitch accent is the focus exponent (Fuchs 1976. Höhle 1982) of a Focus Domain1. Only one syllable is stressed, but a larger text can be focussed. Focus is a linguistic feature [±F] exhibited by part or all of a sentence and defined independently of its phonetic realization2, i.e. the accent signalling it. The maximal constituent that can be (+F1 is the whole sentence. In many cases, however, only a part of the sentence will be focussed, with the rest forming the background. Focus is a cover term for different kinds of phenomena: new information (as opposed to given information), material introduced by a focus operator like sogar ('even') or auch ('also'), all-new sentences, etc... A pitch accent stands for either a narrow or a broad focus. The distinction broad vs. narrow focus is taken from Ladd (1980) who distinguishes between an accent standing for an unspecified focus (broad focus) and an accent standing for a focus which is limited to a smaller constituent (e.g. it is restricted to the word bearing the accent (narrow focus)). Chomsky (1971) has shown that, in a sentence like (2). the nuclear accent is ambiguous as to what constituent is focussed. 1

2

The assignment of accents in a sentence depends on its focus-background-structure, but not exclusively so; it also depends on a number of other factors such as the linear order of the constituents, some cultural factors, the style and rate of speech, etc. According to Culicover & Rochemont (1983), focus without primary accent can be found in the following kind of sentences (here adapted to German): 2 1 (i) Wer hat mit Anna geredet? 'Who has spoken with Anna?' 2 1 (ii) Was hast angekauft? "What did you buy?' These sentences allow for an interpretation in which only the WH-word is focussed. even though it does not bear a primary stress.

14

(2) He was warned to look out for an ex-convict with a red SHIRT The nuclear accent on shirt can stand for any focussed constituent in (3A). The focussed constituent is in brackets. (3) a A: he was warned to look out for an ex-convict with a red [SHIRT] B: no, he was warned to look out for an ex-convict with a red ΉΕ b. A: he was warned to look out for an ex-convict with la red SHIRT] B: no, he was warned to look out for an ex-convict with a CARNATION

c. A: he was warned to look out for an ex-convict [with a red SHIRT] B: no, he was warned to look out for an ex-convict wearing DUNGAREES

d. A: he was warned to look out for [an ex-convict with a red SHIRT] B: no, he was warned to look out for an AUTOMOBILE salesman H hle (1982) has shown that in certain German sentences, too, a nuclear accent is ambiguous between a broadly focussed reading and a narrowfocus reading3. (4a) can be the answer of all A questions given in (4b) to (4d) (but see 1.2.2 for the opinion that the broad and the narrow focus readings are not always phonologically equivalent). The respective B answers indicate which constituent is focussed in each case. (4)

a. Karl hat dem Kind das BUCH geschenkt ('Karl has given the book to the child.') b. A: Was hat Karl dem Kind geschenkt? (What did Karl give to the child?1) B: Karl hat dem Kind [das BUCH] geschenkt c. A: Was hat Karl hinsichtlich des Kindes gemacht? (What did Karl do with respect to the child?') B: Karl hat dem Kind [das BUCH geschenkt] d. A: Was hat Karl getan? (What did Karl do?') B: Karl hat [dem Kind das BUCH geschenkt]

An example of an accent placement unambigously standing for a narrow focus is given in (5): (5) 3

A: Wem hat Karl das Buch geschenkt? (To whom has Karl given the book?1) The subject is left out of the broad focus projection because, in a sentence like (4), it requires its own accent. Hence the accent on Buch, maximally stands for a focussed VP.

15

B: Karl hat dem KIND das Buch geschenkt The accent on Kind stands for a focus (feature) restricted to the NP dem Kind. The focus cannot project or percolate to other constituents, as it does in (4). Focus has received many different interpretations in the literature, but the debate about the interpretation of focus does not concern us here. Following Culicover and Rochemont (1983), Rochemont (1986), von Stechow & Uhmann (1986), and Uhmann (1991). I want to assume that the feature [+F] is assigned on the Chomskyan S-structure. (6)

+F /

\\ +F

+F

The tree (6) can be read from bottom to top (percolation of the feature [aF]), or from top to bottom (inheritance of [+F] by the stressed syllable of a lexical unit). Its direction can be left unspecified, in which case one speaks of focus projection. The feature [+F] can be realized by more than one accent, each indicating a Focus Domain.

1.1 The semantics of focus 1.1.1 Disambiguation of focus Intuitively, two sentences with different accent patterns have different meanings (see von Stechow 1981 and below); the place of the accent(s) in a sentence is not irrelevant, but conveys information about what is possibly part of the background and what is in focus. Compare the following sentences: (7) (i) Es war außerordentlich MILD. 'It was extraordinarily mild' (ii) Der letzte WINTER war außerordentlich mild.4 'Last winter was extraordinarily mild.' 4

Small capitals indicate accents.

16

The focus structure of (7i) is ambiguous: the sentence can be wholefocussed. but the accent on mild can also stand for narrow focussed consituents. viz. außerordentlich mild or just mild. (7ii) has obligatorily a narrow focus because the accent on Winter is not 'neutral' (the precise definition of this term must be deferred to 1.2.2.). In order to disambiguate sentences like (7i), one must know its context of utterance or. more precisely, which question it is supposed to answer. This method for disambiguating focus/background structures is well-known. (7i) is a possible answer to both questions in (8): (8) (i) Wie war der letzte Winter? 'How was last winter?' (ii) Der letzte Winter war außerordentlich was? 'Last winter was extraordinarily what?' Another possible disambiguation test is the use of corrections, where each focussed part is understood as a correction for something that has been said before (see also Uhmann 1991). (9)

(i) Er war [F außerordentlich MILD] (nicht: er war kalt) 'It was extraordinarily mild (not: it was cold)' (ii) Er war außerordentlich [F MILD] (nicht: er war außerordentlich kalt) 'It was extraordinarily mild (not: it was extraordinarily cold)'

I will not enter the debate on the interpretation of focus because my interest in the present work lies in the phonology of accent and focus. I assume that, given the possibility to know what the focus-structure of a sentence looks like, it is not essential to know how it is interpreted (though I am aware that this is a very interesting question). I will only rely on two realities: first, the phonological reality, i.e. the place of accents in a sentence, and second, the structural reality provided by the question test. However, a brief synopsis of some important proposals about the semantics of focus and background might be useful - if only to underline the variety of possible interpretations of focus.

1.1.2 New and given information The functionalist terminology, new information (for focus) and given or old information (for background), has been widely used in the literature

17

(e.g. by Halliday 1967-1968, Chafe 1976, Höhle 1982. Selkirk 1984b). Given information covers various sorts of information (from Siewierska 1988:67): (10)

(a) information that the speaker takes to be either anaphorically or situationally recoverable from the preceding discourse; (b) presupposed information; (c) information that the speaker assumes to be currently in the foreground of his interlocutor's consciousness; (d) information previously evoked or retrievable from the context of the utterance, as well as information inferentially related to some evoked entity, or in a salient set relation to such an entity (shared knowledge).

The notion of 'given (or old) information' has the advantage of being intuitive, but it is not general enough; it cannot replace the notion of 'background1 as the counterpart of 'focus' in all cases5. In particular, it is inappropriate in sentences in which the accented part has been explicitly mentioned (Hi) and/or in which the focus is introduced by a visible focus-operator (llii). (11)

(i) Alain ßiegt manchmal nach Hannover und manchmal nach Nizza. Diesmal ist er nach [FNIZZA] geflogen. 'Alain flies sometimes to Hannover, and sometimes to Nice. This time, he has flown to Nice.' (ii) A: Wir fahren nach Paris. We are going to Paris' B: Nein, doch nicht [FPARIS]. 'No, not to Paris.1

In (Hi) Nizza is focus and in (llii) Paris is, though both are given information. In those cases the distinction given/new thus makes no sense. In the same vein, Reinhart (1981:18) shows that the notion of a 'sentencetopic' must be distinguished from that of 'given information': (12)

i. Who did Felix praise? ii. Felix praised HIMSELF.

In (12ii), both Felix and himself refer to the same person, who is, according to Reinhart, old information. Nevertheless, Felix is the topic and himself is the focus. Von Stechow (1981) argues against Reinhart's rejection of the given/new distinction, because he does find new 5

Chomsky (1971). Jackendoff (1972). Williams (1980) all use the notion of presupposition.

18

information in a sentence like (12) or (13), viz. the information that the sentence is true: (13) i. Hans-Robert has admirers. ii. He admires himself According to von Stechow, the focus information of a sentence is the material implication between its topic information (Chomsky's presupposition) and its content (its truth-condition): the new information is no longer a property of a referent (as it was according to Reinhart), but the new information of (ii). or its focus information with respect to the sentence (i). is the information that ii) is true, given (i) is true. Von Stechow's paraphrase of the meaning of (13) is (14): (14)

If Hans-Robert has admirers, then he admires himself.

1.1.3 Relational focus-background-division Jacobs (1982, 1984, 1988) has developed a relational theory of focus which rests on the insight that some focus structures are governed by a visible operator, dividing a sentence into a focussed part and a background. Jacobs (1984,1988) shows that particle words like sogar 'even', auch 'also', nicht einmal 'not even1, sentence adverbiale like leider 'unfortunately', versehentlich 'by mistake1, zufälligerweise 'by chance', and prepositional attitude verbs like bedauern 'to regret', bezweifeln 'to doubt', sich freuen 'to be pleased' are focussing operators having scope: (15)

(i) Nicht GERDA ist mit Ottheinrich verlobt 'It is not Gerda who is engaged to Ottheinrich.1 (ii) Ich kenne NUR LUISE. only know Luise.' (iii) Luise bedauert, daß GERDA Ottheinrich geheiratet hat. 'Luise regrets that Gerda married Ottheinrich.

Generalizing this, Jacobs proposes to analyze focus as always being in the scope of an operator, whether visible or not. Sentence operators are illocution types as proposed by Zaefferer (1984): ASS for assertion, ERO for question, DIR for command, OPT for wish... Consider his examples: (16)

(i) GERDA hat das neue Buch von Chomsky gelobt

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'Gerda praised Chomsky's new book.' (ii) Gerda hat das NEUE Buch von Chomsky gelobt. (iii) Gerda hat das neue Buch von Chomsky GELOBT. (iv) Hat GERDA das neue Buch von Chomsky gelobt? 'Did Gerda praise Chomsky's new book?' (v) Lobe das NEUE Buch von Chomsky! 'Praise Chomsky's new book!1 (vi) Wenn sie das neue Buch von Chomsky doch nur GELOBT

h tte! 'If only she had praised Chomsky's new book!' (vii) GERDA hat das neue Buch von Chomsky GELOBT (und PETER hat es GETADELT). 'Gerda praised Chomsky's new book and Peter criticized it.' (Jacobs 1988:89) The semantic interpretation of (16i) is indicated in (17), where the argument positions of ASS correspond to the focus/background division: (17) ASS (# λ X(PERF (LOBEN (X.DAS NEUE BUCH VON CHOMSKY))). GERDA #)

More generally, every sentence with a focus-background-division can be represented in the following way: (18)

focus operator (# λχι

xn (α), β :

βη #)

where λχι xn (a) is the background and j , βη is the focus. The interest of Jacobs' theory lies in the fact that each focus operator has its own interpretation, so that the focus-background-division can in principle be interpreted according to the grammatical environment. The common factor of all focus/background divisions is that they are all to be analyzed as a choice from a set of alternatives. Jacobs finds confirmation for this hypothesis in the fact that in cases where there is no alternative, there can also be no focus, provided the sentences under (19) are not understood as corrections: (19)

(i) ?? Ich kenne den Mann, DER dich beleidigt hat. Ί know the man who insulted you.' (ii) ?? Er interessiert sich F R Autos. 'He is interested in cars.'

20

1.1.4 Pragmatic interpretation of focus Some authors have tried to give interpretations of focus in terms of pragmatics. One of them is Bolinger, who maintains his own theory of point of information focus. 'Semantically speaking, we accent a word because its meaning is of particular interest.' (Bolinger 1972,1986:101). This statement sums up Bolinger's point of view: the accent depends on 'relative semantic weight': all focus/accent placement is contrastive in some sense. Compare the following sentences, where, according to Bolinger, the accent depends on the context of utterance, social conventions and the speaker's intentions: (20)

(i) / need a TOOL to WRITE with. (ii) I need a PENCIL to write with.

For an extensive criticism of the 'highlighting' theory advocated by Bolinger in numerous works, see Schmerling (1976:37-44), Ladd (1980: chapter IV), and Gussenhoven (1984, 1985). Bolinger is certainly right in claiming that many accents are unpredictable ('except if you are a mindreader' 1972). But his denying the role of the grammatical component in accent assignment is clearly overdone. Culicover & Rochemont (1983:151ff) propose a pragmatic classification of the uses of focus; by way of contextual interpretation, they distinguish between contrastive, informational and presentational focus. The contrastive stress refers to the focus which is referred contrastively, typically a correction sequence:

(21) John bought a GREEN snake (not blue) Informational focus refers to this kind of focus that is used to provide information, typically the answer to a wh-question: (22) a. Whai Jcind of snake did John buy? b. John bought a GREEN snake Presentational focus is the use of focus to introduce an individual into the discourse: (23) A strange MAN attacked John and Bill. Culicover & Rochemont insist on the fact that the interpretation of focus depends on contextual information and not on the form of particular

21

sentences or stresses. Notice that (21) and (22) can be uttered in the same way, only the context of use differs. Culicover & Rochemont express the principle of autonomy of focus and stress as follows: Generalizations about stress, which is a phonetic phenomenon, are the proper domain of (a part of) the phonological component. By contrast, identification of focus is accounted for within the domain of the syntactic component, whereby a given constituent is represented as 'in focus'. The interpretation of focus is a pragmatic phenomenon, and has to do with contextual beliefs. (Culicover & Rochemont: 123)

Their different classifications of focus do not designate a unique stress pattern, but are a formal property of sentences, or an interpretation of each occurence of focus in the appropriate context. The same sentence with the same accent pattern can have different kinds of focus, depending on the context of the utterance.

1.2 The syntax of focus I will assume a very simple syntax of focus. As mentioned above, a constituent (or a part of it) receives a feature (+F) in the S-structure; the rest of the sentence is the background. Some rules of focus projection (partly formulated in 1.3) predict which words of the constituent bear the phonetic correlate of the syntactic focus feature. The simplest case is a sentence of the form (24), in which a constituent is asked for by a whquestion: (24) A: Wo lebt Andrea? "Where does Andrea live?' B: Andrea lebt [F in ITALIEN]. 'Andrea lives in Italy.1 I assume that any sentence with an adequate accent pattern - adequate for its context of utterance - is accented normally. This use of 'normal' is different from Höhle's (1982)6. In a context like (25i), (25iii) is accented normally, whereas (25ii) is not: (25) i. Wer war der Nikolaus? Who was Santa Claus?' ii. * Das [FWAR Alains Vater] That was Alain's father.' iii. [F Alains VATER ] Whereas the focus feature is usually attributed to one or several 6

See section 1.2.2. and Gussenhoven (1984:387). Uhmann (1991) and Jacobs (1988:120) for a criticism of Höhle's use of the notion 'normale Betonung*.

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constituents, there exist different cases as well. One possibility is a multiple focus, that is two foci7, each introduced by its own wh-word. (26) A: Wer fährt mit wem? *Who is driving with whom?' B: [F1 ALAIN] fährt mit [F2 ED/ ]. 'Alain is driving with Edith.' Bolinger (1986:101) claims that in each subcase, the accent of the finite verb in (27) stands for something different. (27)

i. Tense: He used to sell those products regularly, didn't he? He SELLS them. Still ii. Mode: So you insist that he sell those products, eh? No, I insist that he SELLS them. He does it already. There's no need to require him to. in. Lexical meaning: Why doesn't he buy those products anymore? Because now he SELLS them. iv. Activity: How come I can't buy those products in his store? Because he rarely SELLS them. Now he handles a competing line. v. Actuality: Why doesn't he sell those products any more? He SELLS them! What ever gave you the idea that he had stopped?

(27i) is an instance of an accent on the verb's tense. The speaker wants to emphasize the fact that the action denoted by the verb sells is still true at the present. (27ii) is based on an ambiguity of the word insist, and (27iii) is an instance of a contrastive interpretation of an accent; (27iv) is an example for what Ladd called default accent? and (27v) corresponds to the verum focus (the term has been coined by Höhle 1992). Verum expresses that the (asserted) truth of the sentence is focussed. 7 8

Jacobs (1982:14) and Uhmann (1991) classify these cases as one focus consisting of more than one part ('mehrteilig'). Ladd (1980:81) speaks of a 'default accent' when the accent falls on an item other than the one it would fall on if the focus were 'broad'. According to him, the default accent is of no interest in itself; what is interesting are deaccented words. His most famous example is: (i) A: Did John read Slaughterhouse Five? B: John doesn't READ books Thus the deaccenting of books is important. Ladd gives a rule governing deaccenting: 'deaccent something in order to signal its relation to the context* (p.98). This view of the role of deaccenting is like an inversion of Bolinger's highlighting theory. As it is evident that Slaughterhouse Five is a book, the word boofc is part of the context, old information in the sense of (10). The deaccenting [of books] still signals a kind of contextual reference; it implies a special relevance or relation of the deaccented part of the answer to the addressee's question.' (p.96)

23

Illustrations of the phenomenon of verum focus will be given in 1.2.2. Two other cases of particular interest will also be discussed: focus can be attributed to something smaller than a word (2.1.1) and the sentence as a whole can be focussed (broad focus), thus bearing a neutral accent (1.2.3). 1.2.1 Focussing part of a lexical constituent In (27i) we already saw an example in which only a part of a lexical constituent is focussed, viz. the tense of the verb. (28) and (29) are other contexts where only part of a lexical constituent is focussed; in (28) the gender of the noun is focussed and in (29) it is a connotative or a stylistic component: (28) i. (Hast du eine Katze?) 'Do you have a cat?' Ich habe einen KATER, ja. have a tomcat, yes.1 ii. (Haben Sie zwei Kinder?} 'Do you have two children?' Wir haben zwei SÖHNE, ja.' We have two sons, yes.' (29)

(Hast da Coco's Hund schon gesehen?) 'Have you seen Coco's dog?' Diesen KÖTER, ja! 'That mongrel, yes!'

With the rare exception of certain easily identifiable morphemes that can carry a contrastive stress, as in (30), the difference in the way a constituent is focussed has no counterpart in phonology: whether a word or only a part of it is focussed makes no difference for the placement of the accent. (30) (Ist euer neuer Lehrer auch nett?) 'Is your new teacher (male) nice?' Wir haben eine nette LehrerlN. We have a nice teacher (female).1 1.2.2 Verum focus The term verum applies to some cases of accent on a finite verb. Here are examples from Höhle (1992): (31)

(i) (Ich habe Hanna gefragt, was Karl grade macht, und sie hat die alberne Behauptung aufgestellt, daß er ein DREHBUCH schreibt)

24

asked Hanna what Karl is doing at the moment and she made the silly remark that he is writing a script.' (das stimmt) Karl SCHREIBT ein Drehbuch '(It's true) He is writing a script1 (ii) (Karl hat BESTIMMT nicht gelogen) 'Karl certainly didn't lie1 (nein) Karl HAT nicht gelogen '(no) Karl did not lie1 (iii) (hörst du denn NIE au/7) 'don't you ever stop?" (doch) ich HÖRE mal auf '(yes) I do stop' (iv) (ich Jcann mir nicht vorstellen, daß sie ihn wirklich umbringen wilti can't imagine that she really wants to kill him' (aber ja) sie MACHT ihm den Garaus '(yes) she really does kill him' Höhle proposes that a predicate 'true' be introduced that can be made prominent by a stress on the finite part of the verb. This effect is also present in interrogative sentences, whether introduced by a wh-word or not. (32)

(i) (ich habe Hanna gebeten, damit aufzuhören) asked Hanna to stop it1 HÖRT sie denn damit auf? 'Is she stopping?' (ii) (ich habe Hanna gebeten, damit aufzuhören) Wann HÖRT sie denn damit auf? 'When will she stop it?'

Gussenhoven (1984:409ff) has observed that in Dutch a counterassertive proposition has a different accent structure than a non-counterassertive proposition, and that there exists a difference between Dutch and English in this respect. He gives the following examples: (33) Counterassertive: (i) Negative polarity: The house isn't on fire. Het huis Staat NIET in brand / Das Haus brennt NICHT (ii) Positive polarity: Het huis stoat WEL in brand / Das Haus brennt WOHL

25

(34) Non-counterassertive: (i) Negative polarity: (Stop squirting WATER all over the house. I told you:) The house isn't ON fire. Het huis STAAT niet in brand. Das Haus BRENNT (doch) nicht. (ii) Positive polarity: Het huis STAAT in brand / Das Haus BRENNT (doch) Höhle's verum focus has similarities with non-counterassertive negative and positive polarity focus, though I should mention that Höhle explicitly refutes the term 'polarity1, which he finds 'dubious'. The accent on the finite element in Dutch and German is thus interpreted as a focus on the part of the sentence that expresses that the sentence is true. It has been observed that an instance of verum focus is (always?) associated with deaccenting the postnuclear part of the sentence, which would be accented if the condition of utterance were neutral (see next section). This aspect of verum focus makes it similar to the default accent of Ladd (see fn 8). Höhle has furthermore observed that, if the finite verb appears in (the final position of) a subordinate clause, its accentuation has no verum effect; at best the tense can be interpreted as being focussed9. (35)

(i) (Ich möchte wissen, ob Karl ein DREHBUCH schreibt) would like to know if Karl is writing a script.1 meint, daß er ein Drehbuch SCHREIBT 'Hanna thinks that he is writing a script.' Höhle (1992)

In this context it is interesting to note that, according to some authors, the accent on COMP can sometimes have a verum effect, as well (See Fuchs 1976:309, Gussenhoven 1984 and also Höhle 1992). (36)

9

(Weißt du, ob Hanna kürzlich in ROM war?) 'Do you know if Hanna was in Rome recently?" Ich bin sicher. DAß sie in Rom war (aber ob das KÜRZLICH war, weiß ich nicht.) If the final verb is a copula, the verum focus reading is possible: (i) (Ich möchte wissen, ob sie in ROM ist) would like to know if she is in Rome' Karl meint, daß sie in Rom IST 'Karl thinks that she is in Rome' According to Höhle, this difference between full verbs and copula must be explained by the different lexical properties of the copula.

26

am sure that she was in Rome (but I don't know if it was recently)' The accent on daß can be interpreted as focussing the complementizer. The assertiveness is stressed and chosen from a set of alternatives including conditionality, assertiveness, and possibly other illocution types as well. In my opinion, the phenomenon implied here is not as unambiguous as the earlier cases. 1.2.3 Neutral accent The second interesting and somewhat marginal case is the neutral accent occuring when the whole sentence is in focus. Following Ladd (1980:108ff), Gussenhoven (1984:387). Uhmann (1991). and others. 1 will assume (37): (37) Neutral accent: Only under the maximal focus interpretation does a sentence display a 'neutral accent'. Under this reading, all constituents in a sentence are 'new' or focussed. The maximal focus interpretation is when the focus is maximal in its domain, i.e. the whole sentence is focussed. The approach advocated here departs from numerous works on focus and accent that concentrate on the nucleus placement and exclude all other accents. Chomsky (1971) demonstrates that when an accent is 'nuclear'10, the sentence can serve as an answer to many different questions, with a different choice of focus in each case. This holds only for sentences of a certain syntactic structure, but not for all cases. In this section, one example of this kind of approach (namely Höhle 1982) is discussed in some detail. Höhle (1982) identifies focus with new information. His definition of 'normal accent* is restricted to the focus and leaves the background unspecified. This enables him to consider the 'normal accent* as a kind of statistical notion. The constituent which has the most possible nuclear accents is the one having the 'normal accent': Der intuitive Begriff 'Normalbetonung1 läJ3t sich unter Rückgriff auf den Begriff 'Fokus' adäquat explizieren: Ein Satz S| hat stilistisch normale Betonung g.d.w. er unter allen Sätzen, die sich von Si nur hinsichtlich der Konstituentenbetonung unterscheiden, die meisten möglichen Foki hat. (Höhle 1982:141) 10

Chomsky uses the term nuclear only when the rightmost lexical category is accented.

27 The intuitive term normal stress can be adequately explained with reference to the term focus. A sentence Si has stylistically normal stress if, and only if, in all sentences which only differ from Si regarding the stressed constituents. It has the most possible foci.'

This statistical explanation has no explanatory power, and this is the first flaw of Höhle's approach; to see this, consider a sentence with a long subject and a short predicate. The predicate must have the nuclear accent if the sentence is whole-focussed. (38) Der kleine Mann mit der grünen Mütze hat getanzt. The little man with the green hat danced.' The sentence can answer at least the following questions. In the answers to questions (39a and b), the nuclear accent is on getantzt and in the answers to questions (39 c to e), the accent is on Mütze: (39)

(a) Was ist geschehen? 'What happened?' (b) Weis hat der kleine Mann mit der grünen Mütze gemacht? What did the little man with the green hat do?1 (c) Wer hat getanzt? Who danced?1 (d) Welcher kleine Mann hat getanzt? Which little man danced?' (e) Der kleine Mann mit einer grünen was hat getanzt? The little man with a green what danced?'

The corresponding focus structures are the following ones (in Höhle's notation):

(40)

(a) Focus 1 = der kleine Mann mit der grünen Mütze + getanzt (b) Focus 2 = getanzt (c) Focus 3 = der kleine Mann mit der grünen Mütze (d) Focus 4 = mit der grünen Mütze (e) Focus 5 = Mütze

According to Höhle's proposal, Mütze would have the neutral accent, because it is the nuclear accent found in the majority of contexts. However, this is not the desired result, as shown by several remarks of Höhle, one of them being: 'Ein Satz ist normal betont, wenn die Sprecher diese Betonung als stilistisch normal empfinden; er ist nicht-normal betont, wenn sie diese Betonung als stilistisch nicht-normal empfinden.' (p.85) sentence is normally accented when the speakers perceive the accent

28 pattern as normal; it is not accented normally when the speakers perceive the accent pattern as not normal.'

Höhle's implication is that 'normal accent' and 'stilistic normality1 coincide in all cases. But this is clearly not true, as we saw in example (38). The second flaw in Höhle's definition of 'normal accent' comes from the accent pattern. Consider (41), in which Höhle's definition of 'normal accent' makes the right prediction: (41)

(i) Karl hat dem Kind das BUCH geschenkt. 'Karl gave the book to the child.' (ii) KARL hat dem Kind das Buch geschenkt. (Hi) Karl hat dem KIND das Buch geschenkt. (iv) Karl hat dem Kind das Buch GESCHENKT, (p.86)

For Höhle, (41i) is contextually unmarked, and its accent pattern is stylistically normal, because several constituents can be focussed: for this reason it can occur in the most context types. Höhle notes that (41i) can serve as an answer to the following five questions: (42)

(a) Was hat Karl dem Kind geschenkt? "What did Karl give to the child?' (b)Was hat Karl hinsichtlich des Kindes getan? 'What did Karl do to the child?' (c) Was hat Karl getan? 'What did Karl do?' (d)Wos hat das Kind erlebt? 'What happened to the child?' (e)Was isi geschehen? What happened?'

According to him, (41i) can take each of the following focus structures (why the finite verb cannot be a part of a focussed constituent is not explained): (43)

(a) Focus 1 = dos Buch (b) Focus 2 = das Buch + geschenkt (c) Focus 3 = dem Kind + das Buch + geschenkt (d) Focus 4 = Karl + das Buch + geschenkt (e) Focus 5 = maximal focus = Karl + dem Kind + das Buch + geschenkt (Höhle 1982:91-92)

29

For Höhle, (411) has the 'normal accent' because, compared to the other possible accent patterns, it can answer the most questions. But the answers given to (42) do not obligatorily have the same phonetic form. Höhle's only interest lies in the nuclear accent (the last accent), and he ignores the prenuclear accents. The narrowing of the perspective allows him to treat sentences with different focus-background-structures as equivalent, but this leads to false conclusions. Compare (41i) as a realization of (43a) and of (43d). (43d) has a two-part focus (because Bach and geschenkt together form only one accentual domain), and in (43a) only Buch is focussed; in both cases. Buch is nucleus, but in (43d) Karl has its own accent. In (43a), Kari is unstressed (or less stressed than Buch) and is part of the background: it is old information. If we replace Karl with wegen seiner Tapferkeit11 in (43d). then the accent on the first element in the sentence carries more emphasis. An answer to (44a) with unaccented wegen seiner Tapferkeit is not well-formed. (44)

(Was hai das Kind erlebt?) What happened to the child?' Wegen seiner TAPFERKEIT hat das Kind ein BUCH gekriegt. The child got a book for her courage.'

A split focus can sometimes be realized with only one accent, the nuclear accent, but this realization depends on performance factors like style and speed, and also on the types of constituents. Both sentences have several possible realizations, but only one is common. In this sense, the interpretations of (43a) and (43d) are not phonologically equivalent. In the same vein, the realization of (41i) in the readings (43a) and (43e) are not equivalent either. In (43a). the repetitions of Karl, dem Kind and geschenkt are artificial, and if these words are present at all, they have a flat intonation, i.e. without accent; only Buch is prominent. In (43e). Karl and dem Kind are prominent in the form of a prenuclear pitch accent. Only Buch and geschenkt are obligatorily integrated and build a Focus Domain. Only in the maximal interpretation (43e) does the sentence Kari hat dem Kind ein Buch geschenkt have a 'neutral' stress pattern. (See Ladd 1978 for a similar view). Under this reading, all constituents are new or focussed. The maximal focus interpretation is probably not very common in everyday life, because people do not utter disconnected sentences out of context, but it is nevertheless real in the citation form. 11

'Names are very readily deaccented if even a tenuous contextual reference is possible. The usual contextual reference is something like This name refers to the one that you and I know, rather than to any of the other possible referents of the name."' (Ladd 1978:137, footnote 13)

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1.3 Phonology of focus After these rather long preliminaries, we have finally arrived at the phonology of focus and the subsequent Focus Domain formation (the term Focus Domain has been proposed by Gussenhoven 1984). As was already mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, I take the focus/background structure to be one of the factors needed for a correct prediction of the accent pattern of a sentence, and especially of its Focus Domains. Other factors are cultural or social, such as the degree of acquaintance between the speakers, the style and rate of speech, or the speakers' idiosyncrasies (see Bolinger 1972 for numerous examples). One or more constituents are grouped together in a Focus Domain defined by the presence of a single accent. There are certain syntactic configurations where two or more constituents must or can be melted together into one: this accent pattern is called integrated Focus Domain (the terminology comes from Chafe 1976. Fuchs 1976 and Höhle 1982), whereas others have to be, or may be uttered separately, each forming its own isolated Focus Domain. My claim is: (45) In some cases, two (or more) different accent patterns can be used for the same focus structure. A Focus Domain is a purely phonological notion, arising from the presence of realized accents and possibly other intonational clues as well, like timing or tonal boundaries. As Fuchs already observed12, in many, but not all, cases where the sentence is whole-focussed, there is a choice between an isolated (46i) and an integrated variant (46ii). ([F shows which part of the sentence is focussed, [FD indicates the Focus Domain formation.) (46) 12

(Was ist los?) 'What is the matter?1 (i) [p IFD RAINER] [FD isi zuRüCKgekommen]] 'Der Sprechende hat bei vielen Syntagmen, wenn jede der unmittelbaren Konstituenten "Neues", "Informationen Relevantes" einführt, die Wahl, entweder jede als eigenen Punkt Information zu behandeln und sie getrennt zu akzentuieren, oder aber das ganze Syntagma als eine einzige Einheit Information in die Mitteilung einzufügen, seine Teile zu einer "insgesamt neuen" Einheit zu integrieren, indem er eine für diesen Fall festgelegte Plazierung des Akzents innerhalb des Syntagmas wählt.'(Fuchs 1976:300-1) 'In many syntagmas in which each of the immediate constituents introduces something "new" or "informationally relevant", the speaker has the choice either to treat each as its own information point and to stress them separately, or to introduce the whole syntagma in the discourse as one unit of information, to integrate its parts to a "whole new" unit by selecting one determined stress position inside the syntagma.'

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'Rainer is back.' (ü) IF IFD RAINER ist zurückgekommen]] In the following example. (47i) is whole-focussed. each constituent forming its own Focus Domain. In (47ii), only the predicate is focussed, provided that Computer is understood as part of the background because of the verb tippen. The non-focussed subject is integrated into the Focus Domain of the focussed predicate. (47) (i) (Was ist los?) What is the matter?1 IF IFD Der COMPUTER] [FD ist INFIZIERT.] The computer is infected.1 (ii) (Warum tippst du heute nicht?) "Why are you not typing today?1 [FD Der Computer [F ist INFIZIERT.]] An example of a cultural factor is given in (48) and (49); the formation of some constituents in Focus Domains can depend on what counts as usual or predictable: (48)Alain ist nicht da. Ich glaube, daß er[F[FD im GARTEN] [FD SCHAUKELT!] 'Alain is not here. I think he is on the swing in the garden.1 (49) Alain ist nicht da. Ich glaube, daß er [F [FD im GARTEN spielt]] 'Alain is not here. I think he is playing in the garden.1 The difference in accent structure between the two examples is this: to play is an absolutely normal and predictable activity for a boy of eight, whereas being on a swing is something more particular and not predictable. In the following sub-section, we are going to take a closer look at some cases where integration and isolation are, so to speak, in complementary distribution. Afterwards, sentences with a contrastive use of integration vs. isolation will be examined. 1.3.1 Integration vs. isolation of Focus Domains: complementary distribution The discussion will concentrate on sentences consisting of a subject and a predicate. Certain syntactic regularities are responsible for the assign-

32

ment of the nucleus to the subject or to the predicate. In accordance with the principles developed by Arnim von Stechow and Susanne Uhmann in the Konstanz intonation project, I assume that 'integrated' sentences with the nucleus on their subjects are marked (in a phonological sense, i.e. their distribution is more limited) as compared to sentences with the nucleus on the predicate: (50) The external argument13 of a verb has, in the majority of cases, no nuclear accent. In other words, for a sentence consisting of a subject and a simple predicate to be unmarked, the predicate must bear the nuclear accent. Let us now have a look at sentences with the nuclear accent on the subject (the integration of a subject and a simple predicate). All examples to be discussed now must be taken in whole-focussed readings (as will be indicated by the context in brackets), their accent patterns being neutral. In those sentences, one cannot put an accent on the verb without thereby changing the focus structure: as soon as the verb bears the nucleus, the sentences will be interpreted as having an extra [+F] feature on their verb, contrastive or informational or whatever, depending on the context. In short, to be whole-focussed. the sentences from (51) to (54) must have the nucleus on the subject. The main types fall into two groups: a. If the verb brings the very existence of an individual to the hearer's attention or if it is (more or less) semantically vacuous, it will also allow for the focus to be inherited to the expression referring to that individual. In this category we find verbs of appearance, disappearence, misfortune, etc. (See Allerton and Cruttenden 1979, Gussenhoven 1984 and Krifka 1984 for a discussion of the accent structures of such sentences). (51) (i) (Hörsi du das?) 'Do you hear that?' [F [FD Ein HUND belli]]14 dog is barking.1 13

14

The subject is taken as a deep structural property of a constituent, e.g. as a noun phrase with an agentive thematic role. This theta-role is never subcategorized by a verb phrase. This is why the subject is called an external argument (Williams 1980, 1981). The sentences listed here were used in an experiment I carried out in the Konstanz intonation project in order to test the place of the nucleus in subject-predicate sentences: four native speakers of Standard German, two men and two women, all in their late twenties and without education in linguistics, were asked to read eighty-two sentences out loud. They were asked to produce the sentences freely and to speak naturally, at a normal rate of speech. The sentences were partly taken from Pheby (1980). partly from Krifka (1984), and they were partly new (designed by von Stechow and myself). The results were consistent.

33 (ii) (Was machst du denn für ein Gesicht?) Why are you making that face?1 Meine BRiEFtasche ist weg. 'My wallet is missing.' (iii) (Hörst du das?) 'Do you hear that?' Eine BIENE summt bee is buzzing.' (iv) (Hörst du das7\ 'Do you hear that?' Die TÜR quietscht The door is squeaking.1 (v) (Was machst du denn für ein Gesicht?) Why are you making that face?' Mein ZAHN tut weh. 'My tooth hurts.' (vi) (Was ist hier tos?) What's the matter here?' Der große KARL ist gestorben. 'Charles the Great died.' (vii) (Worum guckst du so entsetzt?) Why are you so upset?' Dein AUGE ist blau. Your eye is blue.' etc. b. The surface subject is not an agent, i.e. it is no external argument, but perhaps something like an 'ergative subject' (see Burzio 1981 and Grewendorf 1988 for a listing of the ergative features) in a very broad sense of this term. (52) (i) (Was ist das für ein Geräusch?) What's that noise?' [F [FD Die SUPPE fcocht.ll "The soup is cooking.' (ii) (Warum u>ird geßaggt?) Why are they saluting?' Ein MINISTER ist angekommen. minister has arrived.' (iii) (Was ist denn nun wieder tos?) What's the matter now?1 Das WASSER läuft. The water is running.' (iv) (Fällt dir u;as auf?) 'Do you see something?1 Ja, das E/S schmilzt 'Yes, the ice is melting.' (v) (Was Neues aus dem Stall?) 'Anything new in the stable?' Die RINDER sind eingeschlafen. "The oxen are asleep.' (vi) (Was meint Maria?) 'What does Maria think?' Maria glaubt, daß Maja ein FEHLER unterlief. 'Maria thinks that Maja made a mistake.' etc. Verbs that take sein as a perfect tense auxiliary are considered to be 'ergative'.

features, both for focus and Focus Domains. The other examples are meant to be structured in a similar way.

34

(53)

(i)(Was gibt's?) What's up?' IF IFD Der BRIEFTRÄGER ist gekommen.]] The postman has arrived.' (ii)(Wos Neues im Dorf?} 'Anything new in the village? Die POSTKUTSCHE ist angekommen. The stagecoach has arrived.1 (iii)(Wos ist mit dem Dach?) What is going on on the roof?' Eine BERGZIEGE ist hochgeklettert, (but: Anna ist HOCHgeklettert) mountain goat has climbed up.'

So passive sentences are ergative. too: the surface subject is a deep object and hence not external. Here are some typical examples: (54)

(i)(Wds ist denn hier los?) What's the matter here?1 [F [FD Der RASEN wird gemäht.]] "The lawn is being mowed.' (ii) (Was passiert jetzt?) What is happening now?' (iii) Das BETT wird gemacht The bed is being made.1 (iv) Der TISCH wird gedeckt. The table is being set.' (v) Der EIMER wird geleert. The bucket is being emptied.' (vi) Der MACINTOSH wird aufgerüstet "The Macintosh is being assembled.1

According to Diesing (1988) and others (Hoekstra & Moulder 1990, Drubig 1992, 1992a. Winkler 1991 a.o.), in all sentences with a nuclear subject the latter is an internal argument of the VP. In her study on primary and secondary predication, Winkler proposes to treat all subjectaccented sentences as ergative sentences. The subject arises at the Dstructure as an internal argument of the verb and is moved in the subject position at the S-structure in order to acquire case. Winkler proposes to explain predicatives (in her and Rothstein's 1985 terminology, secondary predication) in the same way as integrated matrix sentences. We will return to her proposal below. Now consider sentences with the nuclear accent on the predicate (the isolation of the subject's and the predicate's Focus Domains). I said that this accent pattern was the general case because the subject usually has no nuclear accent; if the nucleus is on the predicate, the subject may receive an accent, without changing the focus structure: the sentence remains whole-focussed; only the Focus Domain structure changes. a. In a verbal phrase consisting of a verb and one or more complements, the focus accent can be realized in the verbal phrase, even if the subject is 'ergative'.

35

(55)

(i) (Was ist deine Meinung?) 'What is your opinion?1 [F [FD OTTO ] 1FD ist ein BETRÜGER ]] or [F [FD Otto ist ein BETRÜGER]] Otto is a swindler.' (ii) (Was ist deine Meinung?) What is your opinion?' Annas AUGEN sind BLAU. 'Anna's eyes are blue. (iii) (Wie ist das Wetter?) What is the wheather like?' Dos EIS schmilzt in der SONNE. ' The ice is melting in the sun.' (iv) (Ein schönes Grundstück!} beautiful piece of land!1 Der RASEN wird JEDEN TAG gemäht The lawn is mowed everyday.1

b. The subject is an external argument. The predicate is more prominent than the subject. (56)

(i)(Wie war die Versammlung) 'How was the meeting?' IF IFD Ein MANN l IFD SCHLIEF.]] or [F [FD Ein Mann SCHLIEF]] One man slept.' (ii) (Gibt es was Neues?) Anything new?' OTTO GE/GT. Otto is playing the violin.1 (iii) (Gute Nachrichten?) 'Good news?1 OTTO hat geKOCHT. Otto cooked.1 (iv) (Warum diese Aufregung?) Why all this fuss?' LENA hatgeRAUCHT. 'Lena smoked.1 etc.

The accent structure of predicative constructions (or secondary predications) confirm the above principles. A predicative can have two grammatical functions: - it is the predicate to 'its' subject (external argument); - it is a VP-intemal argument of the main verb. The following hypothesis can be formulated: (57) Under normal circumstances, a VP-internal predicative receives the focus accent. The following predicatives (Umstandspradikative depictive attributives Halliday 1967-8) confirm (57): (58)

(i)

Plank 1985 or

(Wie soli ich servieren?) 'How should I serve it?' [F Ich esse [FD dos STEAK ] [FD ROH ]] eat my steak raw.1

36

(ii) (Haben Sie gewisse Wunsche?) 'Any wishes?' Ja, ich esse das STEAK NACKT15. Yes, I eat my steak nude.' (iii) (Kaufst du. keine Möbel?) 'Aren't you buying any furniture?' Nein, Therese mag das ZIMMER LEER. 'No. Therese likes the room empty.' etc. The other class of predicatives (Resultatsprädikatwe in the terminology of Plank 1985) do not bear the nucleus. In this case, the predicative is subcategorized and maybe incorporated in the verb. The relation is instrumental, causal, modal or resultative. After incorporation, the predicative loses its status as an independent syntagma. It can no longer have a grammatical function as a predicate and the subject of the predicative loses its status of an external argument. In this case, principle (59) applies: (59) In case of incorporation of the predicative in the verb, the internal argument so obtained receives the nucleus. (60)

(i)

(Was ist das Jur ein Krach?) What's that noise?' [F Ernst hämmert [FD die Hundemarke flach.]] 'Ernst is hammering the dog tag flat.' (ii) (Worum mujßt du schon wieder in die Küche?) Why must you go into the kitchen again?1 Alain hai seine FLASCHE leergetrunken. 'Alain emptied his bottle.' (iii) (Was hai Bill gemacht?) What has Bill done?' Er hat das AUTO kaputtgefahren. 'He crashed the car.' (iv) (Was hat Borges gesagt?] What did Borges say?' Martin hat den PINSEL naßgemacht 'Martin wetted the brush.' etc.

The detachable verb particle can be considered as a reduced and idiomatized form of resultative: flachhämmern, zumachen, austrinken16. 15 16

The possibility for ich esse to form its own Focus Domain is left out of consideration. Winkler (1991) gives some contexts in which only steak or only nackt/rohis stressed. In some cases of resultative predicatives there is an accent on the predicative: (i) (Was u>ar dermfl What happened then?' Wladimir machte EDE BETRUNKEN. Wladimir got Ede drunk.' (ii) (Und EDE?) 'And Ede?1 Tom hat EDE KRANK geredet Tom made Ede ill with his non-stop talking.'

37

Winkler (1991) explains the single accent on resultative constructions by positing two overlapping Focus Domains each carrying the accent on the same item. An example is given in (61): (61) She snapped her BAG shut First Focus Domain: She snapped her BAG Second Focus Domain: her BAG shut Since bag is an internal argument of the verb it can project on the whole sentence. In her theory, subject-accented primary predication and secondary predication have the same structure, given in (62), and motivated by the ergativity hypothesis. (62) i. Secondary predication D/S-Structure: IIP NPj V (Sc NPj XP]) (Winter froze the lake solid) ii. Subject-accented primary predication D-Structure: [IP - V [Sc NPi XP]] S-Structure: [IP NPi V [Sc ti XP]] (The TEACHER ßew into a rage, A POLICEMAN appeared) In the case of subject-accented primary predication, the subject arises as a VP-internal argument and is subsequently moved to the external position. In the case of secondary predication, a non-ergative intransitive verb can be combined with a Small Clause complement, the result of which is sentences like the joggers ran the pavement thin' and 'He ate his stepmother out of house and home.' We will now briefly consider sentences with various kinds of verb phrases: sentences where integration applies will be contrasted with sentences with isolated Focus Domains. The criteria determining the choice of the one or the other realization are varied. (63)

Predicates and adverbials (i) Wir sind [FD nach STUTTGART gefahren] 'We drove to Stuttgart.' (directional adverbial-predicate) (ii) Wir sind [FD drei STUNDEN] [FD GEFAHREN] 'We drove for three hours.' (temporal adverbial-predicate)

In these cases incorporation does not apply.

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(64)

Stage-level predicates with two readings (i) Weil fast [FD alle Flüchtlinge in dieser STADT umgekommen sind] 'Since almost all the refugees in this city perished.' (ii) Weil fast [FD alle FLÜCHTLINGE] [FD in dieser STADT umgekommen sind] 'Since almost all the refugees perished in this city.' (Kratzer 1988)

(65)

Functor as argument vs. as attribute: (i) Es ist [drei GRAMM schwer] 'It weighs 3 g.' (argument-predicate) (ii) Es isi [drei GRAMM! [GOLD] 'It is 3 g of gold.' (attribute-predicate) (Krifka 1984:15)

(66)

Lexical variation: Some verbs allow integration with their arguments, others do not (i) es heißt, daß [der JUNGE] [dem PFARRER begegnet ist] They say that the boy met the vicar.' Idioms or common expressions: (ii) Otto hat den Vorschlag [in FRAGE gestellt] Otto questioned the proposal.1 (iii) Davon kann nicht [die REDE sein] You can't be talking about that.' (iv) Marie-Antoinette ist [zu TODE verurteilt] worden 'Marie-Antoinette was sentenced to death.' (v) Es heißt, daß [die THEORIE] [den FACHLEUTEN] [GEFALLEN hat.] They say that the theory pleased the specialists.' (Höhle 1982:105-6)

(67)

Miscellaneous (i) [fester EiNdrücken] 'push harder', [SCHNELL laufen] 'run fast1, [im BETT liegen] 'lie in bed1 (ii) [FESTER] [VERSUCHEN] 'try harder', [SCHWELL] [KOMMEN]

'come quickly', [im BETT] [ARBEITEN] 'work in bed' Gussenhoven (1984) tried to systematize the formation of Focus Domains in order to predict the place of accents relative to the focus-structure of a sentence, thus departing from the traditional view of the nuclear accent as the only accent relevant to the focus-background-structure. He formulated rule (68): (a) is a rule of Focus Domains formation and (b) is the accent assignment in each domain.

39

(68)

Sentence Accent Assignment Rule (SAAR): (a) Domain assignment: P(X)A -* [P(X)A] A(X)P -> [A(X)P] Y->[Y] (b) Accent assignment: [ ] -» [*]. In AP/ΡΑ, accent A.

A, P stand for Argument (subject or object) and Predicate, respectively, while X and Υ stand for Argument, Predicate or Condition (adverbials). Underlining symbolizes [+focus], absence of underlining [-focus], [] delimits a Focus Domain. SAAR divides the sentence into Focus Domains and gives each Focus Domain an accent. This rule is extremely simple and it predicts that in predicate/argument structures the accent goes to the argument. It also predicts that a [- focus] constituent can stand between the argument and the predicate and the rule still applies; but, if a [+focus] constituent stands in this position, integration will not take place. The third prediction is that an argument, a predicate, or a condition, receives an accent, provided it is focussed and it has not been integrated into a Focus Domain. In brief, a rule of Focus Domain integration like SAAR takes as input a certain number of constituents, focussed or not, and predicts how these constituents are grouped into domains and which constituents receive an accent. However attractive SAAR is, it has some drawbacks having to do with its lack of flexibility. First of all, as Gussenhoven himself observed, it is too general because it only considers grammatical functions. This leads to a great deal of restrictions like the following: an unrestricted quantifier« like nothing, no one, or everyone cannot merge with predicates. (69)

(i) (ii)

(What happened?) The PRISONERS have escaped. (What happened?) EVERYBODY has ESCAPED. (Gussenhoven 1984)

Secondly, SAAR considers minimal accent structures instead of stating, for each structure, all possibilities in the formation of Focus Domains. As an example, consider the rule APA-»[A] [PA] that gives the wholefocussed sentence John beats Mary the accent structure JOHN beats MARY. But in an APA sentence, it is, of course, also possible to accent the predicate, as in JOHN ADORES only MARY. This possibility is often present, and which realization will be chosen depends on the lexical items, the length of the constituents, the context of utterance, etc.

40

A third problem is the status of sentences consisting of a subject and a simple predicate. SAAR only predicts a nucleus on the subject: (70) AP -» [AP] Our DOG's disappeared In order to explain that numerous sentences have their nuclei on the predicate, Gussenhoven distinguishes between eventive and non-eventive sentences, treating the non-eventive sentences as exceptions. Let us put Gussenhoven's proposal in a larger perspective. 1.3.2. Integration vs. isolation of Focus Domains: alternation position Consider Schmerling's (1976:41-42) puzzle: ('In December of 1972 former president Truman was hospitalized in critical condition. [...] Because of the seriousness of Truman's condition and his advanced age. it could be reasonably assumed that he would not survive this crisis and that it was just a matter of time before he would die. [...] One morning I came downstairs to breakfast, and my mother, who had gotten up earlier and listened to the news, announced to me:') (71) (i) Truman DIED (Ά few weeks later I was back at my job at the University of Texas. One afternoon my husband drove to campus to pick me up when I was finished working for the day, and as I got into the car he announced:) (ii) JOHNSON died ([...] Johnson's health was not on people's mind as Truman's had been, and when his death came it was a surprise.') Schmerling (1976:41-42) Schmerling explains the difference between the two sentences as that between a 'topic-comment' sentence, (71i), and a 'news' sentence, (71ii). Her general accent rules predict the stress structure of JOHNSON died. Concerning the accent pattern of Truman DIED, she remarks that

41

sentences with a primary stress on the predicate and an accent on the subject 'all seem intuitively to be "about" the subject of the sentence rather than an entire event or state of affairs; that is, in uttering such a sentence, the speaker brings up some topic and says something about it makes a comment.' Ladd (1980:91), who has severely criticized Schmerling for another reason (her rejection of the notion of normal accent), agrees with her on the interpretation of (71i)17. Gussenhoven. on the other hand, disagrees with Schmerling's analysis of these sentences: he explains the difference between the two sentences in terms of different focus structures; according to him,Truman is [- focus], whereas died is [+focus]; in (71ii) the whole sentence is [+focus] and the subject receives the nuclear accent due to normal accent assignment principles. I think that the difference actually lies in the focus structure of the sentences, but not in Gussenhoven's sense. Let me explain my point of view in some detail. First of all, the sentence Truman died actually has two natural or 'normal' accent patterns. The first one is a realization with only one accent on died. Had Truman been under debate when the sentence was uttered, then so would have been his (possible) death. What is new is that his death has actually occurred: the accent on the finite element is, in other words, a venim focus. In the vein of von Stechow (1981): (72) If Truman dies, then his death is accomplished. However, as present as Truman might have been at the time, Schmerling's mother could not expect her daughter to think of Truman on waking up. And this brings us to the second natural realization of the sentence, namely the one with two accents, one on Truman and one on died. The accent on Truman induces a kind of contextualization or contingency, meaning Ί want you to have Truman contextually present'18. Truman is not present when the sentence begins, but he is as soon as his name is mentioned and so is his physical state: Truman was expected to die. and so the mere utterance of his name evoked his probable death. Thus, the 'topic' accent'19 on Truman transforms a 17

18 19

Ladd treats Truman as deaccented. though Schmerling insists that it receives an accent. Probably both are right, in a sense. Ladd considers all accentable words that would receive nuclear accent under neutral accent as deaccented ; but of course in (711). Truman is not unaccented. This effect might be due to a pragmatic rule of accommodation, in the sense of Lewis (1979). Traditionally, the term 'topic' has two different uses: 1) In its first use it is opposed to 'focus'. Following Jacobs, I have here used the term background instead. 2) The second sense is the one employed in the present work: the topics of a

42

focussed item into a background item for the rest of the sentence. I thus think that if anything in the sentence (71i) is [-focus], then it is the lexical content of the word died, precisely as in the first case. But, as in the first case, died is still the nucleus of the sentence; however, it is not the lexical content of the word that is focussed, but a kind of verum element, its actuality, in Bolinger's terminology (or perhaps its tense). Schmerling gives more examples of sentences that can be accented on the subject or on the predicate, depending on the context of utterance: (73)

(i) The statue's HEAD is missing (description of the statue) (ii) The statue's HEAD is MISSING (report of vandalism)

(74)

(i) / had a gray HAIR Jail out. (the speaker is upset at discovering the presence of a gray hair) (ii) / had a gray HAIR fall OUT. (the speaker has numerous gray hairs)

Halliday's (1970:38) examples are along the same lines: (75)

HUNDE müssen getragen werden/HUNDE werden getragen DOGS must be carried ('the man in the London Underground was worried because he had no dog': quoted by Gussenhoven 1984:403)

(76)

HUNDE müssen GETRAGEN werden/HUNDE werden GETRAGEN DOGS must be CARRIED20

20

sentence are the themes about which the utterance says something. This restricted definition of topic agrees with the definition given by Botz et al. (1988), a.o. Topics are usually elements of the background, because they are 'known' by the people involved in a conversation; but this is not a necessary condition (see also Reinhart 1981): topics can also be focussed. Another consequence is that there can be more than one topic in a sentence and that there exists a gradience of topics in a sentence. See Botz et al (1988) for more details: they show that in a sentence like (i). an anaphor refers to the most salient discourse topic, (i) a. Was ist mit dem Jungen: What is the matter with the boy?' b. Ein Motorradfahrer hat ihn angefahren. motorcyclist ran into him.1 c. Er ist von einem Motorradfahrer angefahren worden. 'He was run into by a motorcyclist.' d. Er hat die Ampel übersehen. 'He failed to see the traffic light.' According to Botz et al., the focussed constituents newly introduced In the sentence receive a relatively high degree of saliency and become themselves candidates for antecedency for anaphora. Furthermore, in (i) in the sequence a.b.d the pronoun er in d. is more likely to refer to the motorcyclist than in the sequence a.c.d. Another example due to Manfred Krifka (p.c.) is the sign read in a German library: Bitte leise reden 'Please speak softly'. Krifka, seeing this sign, imagined the global interpretation and laughed so loud that he had to leave the library.

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All these sentences can be interpreted as whole-focussed: in a traditional terminology, the accent pattern implying one accent on the subject (71) supports a 'global' interpretation. Other terms for such sentences are thetical (Sasse 1987), or eventive (Gussenhoven 1984), and all-new (Schmerling 1976): they express an entire event. (77) Some whole-focussed sentences consisting of a subject and a predicate can have their nucleus on the subject; they then receive a global interpretation. Now for the sentences under (76). My interpretation of the accent on the subject is that of a double function: it plays the same role as a focus accent, but, since it is not final (as marked by the rising intonation), it also serves as a background for the rest of the sentence. In fact, all accents other than the final one can be interpreted in the same manner. The interpretation of (76) can be paraphrased by: 'should any dogs be contextually present, then you must carry them*. This kind of sentence has been called categorical (Sasse 1987), non-eventive (Gussenhoven 1984), or topic-comment (Schmerling 1976). Again, it is possible to realize this sentence with only one accent, viz. on the predicate, but this accent pattern then implies that some dogs are in fact contextually present. (78) Some whole-focussed sentences consisting of a subject and a predicate can have their nucleus on the predicate and an accent on the subject. The interpretation of the subject accent is that of a focus becoming background. Before I review some further proposals about the relation between focus and accent, something must be said about prenuclear accent. Up to now, it was implicit that all accents of each Focus Domain are equally realized. This is not tenable, simply because the nuclear accent is often felt stronger than the other ones. In Höhle's (1982) sentence Karl hat dem Kind das Buch geschenkt, the prominence of Buch seems to be greater than that of Karl or that of Kind. However, when we look at real contours (as we are going to do in the second part), we will observe that this difference is not reflected in pitch height (at least not in an unemphatic style of speech). Part of the impression of greater prominence comes from the finality features taken over by the nuclear accent, i.e. a long fall of fundamental frequency (Fo) and often a greater duration of the last accented syllable. The non-final accents, on the other hand, are often

44

rising and if not, the fall is a short one. Rhythmical factors can also play a role in minimizing the medial accents, thus leaving the first and the last accents as the only ones realized. The last accent is, by definition, the nuclear accent, no matter if it is more or less prominent than the preceding ones. 1.4. Nuclear accent assignment In the remainder of this chapter. I will briefly review some proposals that have been made in the literature to predict the place of the nucleus with the help of various principles: linear order, head/argument distinction, rhematic hierarchy, etc. (79) Nuclear Stress Rule (NSR) (Chomsky & Halle 1968): Assign nuclear stress to the rightmost lexical category in S. Compare the following examples from Krifka (1984), which respect the NSR. The nuclear accent is underlined. (80)

(i)

Anna hat heftig geseufzt vs Anna seufzte heftig 'Anna sighed heavily.' (ii) Otto hat auf dem Sofa aepennt vs. Er pennte auf dem Sofa Otto slept on the coach.' (iii) Ein goldener Ring vs ein Ring aus Gold golden ring, (iv) Der geigende Junge vs der Junge, der geigt 'The boy playing the violin.' (v) Die Eintrittskarte von Anna vs Annas Eintrittskarte. 'Anna's admission ticket.'

In all these sentences (with isolated Focus Domains), the last accented constituent is the nuclear one. However, the NSR alone does not make the right prediction in all cases21. Compare (81i) and (8Iii), all neutral accents. (81)

21

(i) wegen TOM 'because of Tom' Tom bleibt bei DIR Tom stays with you.' nach meiner MEINUNG 'in my opinion' (ü) TOMS wegen

The same observation has been made by Schmerling (1976), Selkirk (1984) (for English). Krifka (1984), and von Stechow & Uhmann (1986) (for German).

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meiner MEINUNG nach Boro wollte, daß alle seine Adepten zu ihm kommen. 'Boro wanted his adepts to come to him.'

Tom bleibt BEI dir. Schmerling (1976) and Selkirk (1984) both replace the NSR by principles using grammatical functions. Selkirk proposes the following principles: (82) Basic Focus Rule A constituent which has a pitch accent assigned to it is focussed. (82) associates each pitch accent with a focus feature. However, we will see in Chapter 2 that there are accents whose realization depends on rhythmical factors only. My proposal makes no such claim as (82) because it distinguishes focus (which is an abstract linguistic feature) and Focus Domain (which is a phonological unit). Selkirk's next principle is formulated in (83). (83) Phrasal Focus Rule A constituent may be focussed if its head is focussed and/or a constituent contained within it which is an argument of its head is focussed. Von Stechow & Uhmann (1986) criticize Selkirk's approach and show that, at least for German, it does not hold for all cases. Compare (86).

(86) (What did she do next?) She sent MARY a book. According to von Stechow & Uhmann the stress on Mary allows only narrow focus on this word and does not allow focus projection on the whole verbal phrase, though Selkirk convincingly argues that it does in appropriate contexts. They also show that focus projection along the headline is not always possible (87). (87) i. ein MANN mit Vermögen ii. She SENT Mary a book.

In (87), an accent on the head does not allow focus projection on the whole phrase. Von Stechow & Uhmann themselves propose the following rules for focus-projection:

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(88) F-projection in a sentence is possible, if the following conditions exist simultaneously: (a) The focus exponent (i.e. the element carrying a pitch accent which realizes F) is in an F-position. (= focus congmency) (b) Normal linear order is given (= NLO-condition) (c) The focus exponent is the strongest element in the Rhematic Hierarchy. (=RH-condition) The rules (88) are illustrated in the examples (89) (from von Stechow & Uhmann). (89) weil Ede mit der Hacke dies LOCH ins Eis gehackt hat Subj Adv III Obj Adv I predicate 'Since Ede has cut this hole into the ice with the ax.' (88) makes use of some independent principles. (a) The focus positions in German are immediately before the predicate (see 93). (89) fulfills this condition. (b) According to von Stechow & Uhmann, normal linear order is given in (89). However, normal linear order is a difficult notion to define. See Lenerz (1977), Höhle (1982), Reis (1986), and von Stechow & Sternefeld (1988). Let me mention just one of these difficulties: von Stechow & Sternefeld (1988:456) show that there are lexical varieties in the normal linear order of the constituents (M means marked): (90)

Er unterstellte den Lehrling dem Meister. 'He assigned the apprentice to the master.' M Er unterstellte dem Meister den Lehrling.

(91)

Tante Frieda liefert Onkel EwaldDAT Tante AmandaACC aus 'Aunt Frieda put Aunt Amanda at Uncle Ewald's mercy.' M Tante Frieda liefert Onkel Ewald ACC Tante Amanda DAT aus 'Aunt Frieda put Uncle Ewald at Aunt Amanda's mercy.'

Thus, the verb unterstellen prefers to have the accusative before the dative, whereas ausliefern has this order reversed. (c) As for the Rhematic Hierarchy, Contreras (1976) elaborates one for Spanish. He shows that some grammatical functions are more likely to

47

bear the nucleus than others. Following Contreras' idea, Pheby (1980) proposes the following Rhematic Hierarchy for German: (92)

Adv III < Verb < V-Zusatz < Subj < Adv II < Adv I < Obj < Präd temp instr. direct, caus locative Pheby (1980:871)

This hierarchy is based on the structure of the German sentence given in (93).

(93)

Subject

( Temp

XP Adv I % Predicate Direct ( Predicative

r

Focus positions Again (89) fulfills condition (c) of (88). Von Stechow & Uhmann's approach covers cases of broad focus in taking into account only structural factors. See Uhmann (1991) for some expansions of this model. An important drawback of this model is that it presupposes that sentences, even long ones, always have only one accent. From this point of view, it is subject to the same criticism made to Höhle's model earlier in this chapter.

48

1.5. Summary I have proposed to divide a (whole-focussed) sentence into Focus Domains. The principles regulating the formation of these Focus Domains are varied: some are syntactic, structural, stylistic, cultural, etc., one of the most important factors being the focus-background-division. The location of accents in an utterance plays a considerable role in the intonation of German. The last accent of a sentence carries not only the pitch change typical for an accent but also some tonal correlates of finality: longer duration, greater fall or rise, etc. The next chapters will be concerned with the tonal realization of these accents and with the way the Focus Domains are rendered and perceived by the speakers.

Chapter 2: The tone-sequence analysis of intonation and the tonal correlates of phrasing This chapter is concerned with the tonal realization of the Focus Domain defined in the preceding chapter. After a brief introduction to Pierrehumbert's model (2.1) and in the autosegmental theory (2.2), we will see that the Focus Domain has no necessary independent tonal correlate in the form of boundary tones (2.3). Also, it is often not possible to 'hear1 the Focus Domain structure of a sentence from its tonal realization. It must be hypothesized that hearers rely on other factors than intonational ones to decide on the division of sentences into Focus Domains. 2.1. Pierrehumbert's proposal In its original and most radical form, the tone-sequence analysis of intonation has been developed for English by Pierrehumbert and various co-authors (Pierrehumbert 1980, Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984, Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986). Their model combines phonological and phonetic elements. Pierrehumbert interprets intonational tunes as structured strings of L (for low) and H (for high) tones, generated by a finite-state grammar (Fig.l). The following transition net represents the set of well-formed tonal sequences for an Intonation Phrase (see below for an informal account of the Intonation Phrase). From this transition net one can see that Pierrehumbert does not distinguish between nuclear and pre-nuclear accents. Only 22 of the possibilities are contrastively used in English for the nuclear and postnuclear contour:

50 14)

Boundary Tone

Pitch Accents

Phrase Accent

Boundary Tone

Flg. l (Plerrehumbert 1980:29)

All Intonation Phrases (strings of tones) must consist of three kinds of tones: 1) Pitch accents, monotonal or bitonal, are realized on prominent syllables on the basis of the metrical pattern of the text. Following a proposal first made by Bolinger (1958), pitch accents are morphemes, i.e. unanalyzable entities. Pierrehumbert has contrasted six well-defined accent forms: two single-tone accents, H* and L*, and four 1 bitonal accents: H*+ L, H + L* L*+ H and L + H*2. Accents are associated with one of the well-defined pitch shapes: the criteria of this association have to do with the metrical structure of the sentence, as well as with other factors: pragmatics, focus structure, and so on. 2) Phrase accents, high (H) or low (L), are realized after the pitch accents and after a certain amount of time. In Pierrehumbert (1980), the phrase accents determine the melody between the nuclear tone and the boundary. In Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) the phrase accent has a completely different interpretation; it is now an Intermediate Phrase 1

2

In her 1980 dissertation she also has H*+H for certain hat contours. In later works she suppresses it. In Pierrehumbert (1980), the trail tones and the phrase accents are provided with a diacritic (Η*ΙΓ, H'L·*. L". H'). In Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986), these tones appear without diacritic. In the present work the more recent convention is respected.

51

boundary, i.e. a boundary of an intermediate level of phrasing (intermediate phrase). (See Fig.2.) 3) Boundary tones, high (H%) or low (L%), are realized on the last syllables of an Intonation Phrase and determine the phrasing. After a pause, there may also be a boundary tone at the beginning of the phrase. Whereas in Pierrehumbert (1980), boundary tones could appear in the middle of an intonation phrase, as shown in Fig.2a, in Beckman and Pierrehumbert (1986), they occur solely at the end of an Intonation Phrase (Fig.2b). 350

250

inurt

150

Figs. 2a and b (a) T means insert as analyzed by Pierrehumbert (1980). my interpretation, (b)'/' means insert as analyzed by Beckman and Pierrehumbert (1986:289), their interpretation.

The realization of Fig.2 involves two Intermediate Phrases and contrasts with a realization of the same sentence in only one Intermediate Phrase, as in Fig.3; here only one bitonal tone is realized, namely on insert. 350 -

250

initrl 150

Fig. 3 /' means insert From Beckman and Pierrehumbert (1986:289). 'Phrasing in English is highly facultative.'

52

The tunes, as well as the three different tones composing them, are all made of the same phonetic material, viz. the fundamental frequency (F0) contours. The tune is mapped onto a phonetic representation by two kinds of rules, one evaluating the tones, the other one construing the F0 contour between one target value and the next. 1) The tones are given phonetic values (real F0 values) by contextsensitive rules: the actual height of any H or L depends on three parameters: a) its relationship to the baseline, i.e. the lowest value in the speaker's range, a transform of the F0 domain, relatively constant for each speaker (see Fig. 4); b) the degree of prominence the speaker opts to give to her or his utterance: the pitch range increases with the 'degree of over-all emphasis' (Fig. 4); 300 250 200

RANGE OF PEAKS

150 100

i RANGE OF ~f~LOWS

Fig.4 Several contours of the word Anne (From Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984:168) illustrating different degrees of emphasis given to this word. The baseline, i.e. the bottom of the fall realized on this word is relatively constant.

c) its relation to preceding tones: according to Pierrehumbert, each tone (understood as a target value) is produced on the basis of the preceding one and the concatenation of the single tones makes up the melody. The tone mapping rules alter the phonetic values assigned to a tone as a function of its tonal context. 2) The other kind of rules mapping the tune onto a phonetic representation are those that construe the F0 contour between two tones. These are either interpolation rules, or spreading of an H~ or a L". The difference between interpolation (Fig.Sa) and spreading (Fig.Sb) is

53

that interpolation involves syllables that are left unspecified with respect to tones and the pitch is calculated on the basis of getting from one specification to the next. Interpolation produces generally smoothly rising or smoothly falling contours and it also predicts that between two H's there will be a dipping in the contour. Spreading involves syllables that are specified with respect to tone; e.g. all syllables having the same spreading tone are on the same level. Only phrase accents can spread, pitch accents and boundary tones do not (unless explicitly specified).

0»iu

* L~ L

Fig.Sa There are many intermediate levels (interpolation between L~ and H·) From Pierrehumbert (1980:329)

rig.Sb The cardamon bread was palatable (spreading of L') FYom Pierrehumbert (1980:371)

54

In Fig. 5a the syllables ny, inter and diate of many intermediate are left unspecified. The F0 contour goes smoothly from the L syllable ny of many to the H* of me of intermediate. Interpolation is involved. In Fig.Sb, on the other hand, all syllables of bread was palata(ble) are associated with the phrase accent L (except for the last syllable of palatable, which is associated with the high boundary tone). The result is a flat low contour. In this case spreading is involved. The idea that all melodies can be described by decomposing them into single tones is central to Pierrehumbert's phonological proposal and is related to the fact that for her not the tunes are morphemes, bat only the tones composing them. Differences in the overall configurations among intonation patterns are thus due to differences in particular tones and their phonetic values. The tunes are not atoms but rather are productively generated by a grammar. Consequently, their meaning is to be determined compositionally from the pitch accents, the phrase accent, and the boundary tone. However, the meaning of tones and tunes is left largely unconsidered in her work (but see Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990 for some proposals about the meaning of the individual tones). Pierrehumbert is interested in the autosegmental mapping between the different tunes and texts (see below for a short overview of the autosegmental phonology). The way tunes are mapped onto a text depends on the segmental material the text is made of. If the text is long enough, each tone is clearly distinguished from the others. In a short text, however, the tones are crushed together and in some cases the resulting tonal strings will be ambiguous. Pierrehumbert's model leans, on the one hand, on Liberman (1978), who developed a metrical theory of intonation, and, on the other hand, on Bruce (1977), who, in his analysis of the Swedish word accents, isolates three different kinds of tones with different functions. Pierrehumbert's phrase accent is inspired by Bruce's phrase accent, but, as Ladd (1983:746) pointed out, her phrase accent is 'a substantial modification of Bruce's phrase accent": in Swedish it stands for an extra prominence after a nuclear tone, whereas in English there is no such extra prominence3. The use of only two tones has advantages over a theory using four or more tone levels: Bolinger (1951) has noted that positing four or more tone levels leads to ambiguity because it confounds tonal differences with differences in the choice of pitch range. Moreover, local prominence and overall pitch range also introduce variation into the system. An analysis making use of two tones has no such difficulties and still has all advantages of describing intonation as a sequence of tone levels. It should 3

The reader is referred to Bruce (1977) and Pierrehumbert (1980) for details; Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) gives a summary of Pierrehumbert (1980).

55

be mentioned that Isacenko & Schädlich (1966) have already proposed a two-tone analysis of German intonation: Wir gingen von der Annahme aus, daß bestimmte typische 'Intonationsmuster' des Deutschen, die wir zunächst als syntaktisch relevante Intonationsmuster bezeichnen wollen, durch den Wechsel zweier und nur zweier Tonstufen repräsentiert werden können. Im Vergleich zur "irrationalen" Buntheit der natürlichen Tonverläufe bedeutete diese Annahme eine bis ins Äußerste gehende Vereinfachung und Schematisierung der tatsächlich zu beobachtenden Vorgänge. Die Annahme einer binären Opposition innerhalb der deutschen Satzintonation ergab sich aus der Notwendigkeit, die überaus unbefriedigenden, weil unüberprüfbaren Ansätze von drei oder vier oder fünf Tonstufen (pitch levels) durch einen leicht kontrollierbaren Ja-Nein-Gegensatz zu ersetzen. (Isacenko & Schädlich 1966:12) We assumed that certain typical intonation patterns of German (we called them syntactic relevant intonation patterns) could be represented by an alternation of two and only two pitch levels. In comparison with the "irrational" diversity of the natural tonal contours, this hypothesis amounted to an extreme simplification and schematization of the observed facts. The proposal of a binary opposition in the German sentence Intonation was called upon by the necessity of replacing the utterly unsatisfying and uncontrollable theories of three, or four, or five pitch levels by an easily controllable yes-no contrast.'

A major difference between Isacenko & Schädlich and Pierrehumbert is that Pierrehumbert gives her two tones a phonological interpretation: high and low are abstract values and real phonetic values must be computed for each occurence of them, whereas Isacenko & Schädlich interpret their tones literally and transform all melodic contours in a sequence of two F0 values, e.g. 150 and 160 Hz (or other values), thus producing very unnatural stretches of speech and showing that they are still interpretable. One important (and also controversial) point of the tone-sequence analysis as developed by Pierrehumbert (1980) is that her local implementation rules, attributing a phonetic value to each tone, do not have a context to the right. Each tone is computed only in relation with the preceding ones, and there is absolutely no pre-planning. In Liberman & Pierrehumbert (1984), this idea is taken even further. It is assumed that an early nuclear peak has no effect on the following peaks, if there are any. but only the final lowering induces the difference between Fig 6a and 6b.

56

ANNA "B ACCENT"

CAME WITH

MANNY "A ACCENT"

Fig.6a From Liberman & Pierrehumbert (1984:168) A F0 contour for Anna came with Manny, produced as a response to What about Anna? Who did she come with?

ANNA

"A ACCENT"

CAME W I T H

MANNY "B ACCENT'

Fig.6b From Liberman & Pierrehumbert (1984:168) A Fo contour for Anna came with Manny, produced as a response to What about Manny? Who came with him?

In Fig. 6a, Manny has more emphasis than Anna, because being the answer to the foregoing question, it carries the focus accent (A accent in Liberman & Pierrehumbert' terms). Although Manny is more prominent, it is on approximately the same pitch level as the background accent (B accent) on Anna. In Fig.6b, the relation between the accents is inverted, Anna carries the A accent (it is the answer to the question) and Manny the B accent. Anna is much higher than Manny because Manny has undergone the effect of final lowering. Final lowering is a characteristic of the last pitch accent, the nuclear one, when it is a fall. As a consequence

57

of its effect, the value of a final accent is lower than that of a non-final pitch accent (in the examples of Fig. 6 the last accent is lower than it would be if it were non-final). 'Final lowering is a gradual compression and shift of the pitch range which occurs in anticipation of the end of the declarative utterance. It affects the scaling of accents as well as the realization of the postnuclear tones.[...] This means that in multi-phrase utterances, only the last intonation phrase is typically affected' (Beckman and Pierrehumbert 1986:300).

2.2. Autosegmental association As already mentioned, tune-text association happens in an autosegmental manner. Goldsmith (1976), Leben (1976) and Williams (1976) have developed the autosegmental framework to escape the strictly linear type of phonology of Chomsky & Halle (1968, hereafter SPE). Their original aim was to develop a framework able to cope with the tones of tone languages. The SPE type of phonology assumes that the representation of phonology consists of a string of segments arranged linearly. All features (also tone and stress) are then represented in an unordered matrix in a one-to-one fashion. The autosegmental framework, on the other hand, postulates the existence of several parallel tiers of segments. Each segment is represented on its own tier, and the rules applying on one tier generally have no influence on the other tiers. This representation allows tones to be represented independently of the segments they are associated with, and more particularly allows the elimination of the obligatory one-to-one association, which still is the preferred association pattern, but which is no longer obligatory. Goldsmith (1976) has formulated the Universal Association Convention (UAC) (li) and the well-formedness convention (lii): (1) i. Match the tones and the tone-bearing-units (TBU's) one-to-one leftto-right, ii. Association lines are not allowed to cross. The following cases can be represented easily: 1. Two tones can be mapped onto a single TBU 2. One tone can be mapped onto two TBU's As an illustration, consider the following data from Margi. a Chadic

58

language spoken in Nigeria (Hoffman 1963, cited by Kenstowicz 1991). In this language there are three melodic patterns for verbs: high, low, and rising.

(2)

high: cu 'speak' low: ghä 'reach' rising: fi 'swell1

In an autosegmental framework the tones are represented as in (3):

(3)

cu

gha

H

L

LH

In (3) the vowel of the verb Ji is associated with two tones, L and H, whose phonetic realization is a rising tone4. According to Hoffman, there is a fourth category of verbs, called changing verbs, with no underlying tones. When the changing verbs are suffixed with a high-toned suffix, the high tone of the suffix, being first unlinked, associates from left-to-right, creating a pattern as in (4): (4) fa 'take many' + n'ari

H

->

fa Q'sri

H

Thus in (4), one tone can be associated with more than one TBU. Other aspects of the tonal phonology can be expressed in the autosegmental framework: 3. Tones can be unassociated 4. TBU's can exist without tones associated with them. Goldsmith (1990) discusses cases of Mixtecan, spoken in Mexico. Mixtecan has three underlying tones, H (High), L (Low) and M (Mid). In this language, some words have a suffixal High tone which is underlyingly unassociated. If such a word appears in isolation, the High tone is not realized (51). If there is another word following, the High tone associates with this word (5ii). For an extended introduction to autosegmental phonology and the motivation for this representation, see van der Hülst & Smith (1982), Goldsmith (1990) and Kenstowicz (1991).

59 (5)

i.

ke e 'will eat' MM H

ii

k e e 'will eat' +

Π

MM H

suci 'child' — >

n

LH

kee

suci

i\ / \

MM H LH

(5i) illustrates a tone which is present underlyingly, but which is left unassociated in certain conditions. The same holds for the L in (5ii). The H of kee causes the deletion of the association line between the Low tone and its TBU. The last case, a TBU without tone, was already illustrated by the changing verbs in Margi. A verb like fa has no tone underlyingly. A default Law tone is associated with this verb only late in the derivation. Pierrehumbert proposes to adapt this framework, originally developed for tone-languages, to English, which is an intonation language. In her proposal, the starred tones ( = pitch accents) are first associated with the stressed syllables (the most prominent in a metrical representation), the boundary tone is automatically linked to the last syllable, and the way the unstarred tones are associated with the text depends on principles which are partly language universal and partly language-specific, viz. spreading or interpolation. In the present work, an autosegmental framework is used for German as well. I do not try, however, to give an exact formulation of the rules at work, but rather rely on the general principles just described, as well as others introduced below.

2.3. Tonal phrasing The tonal domains used by Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) and adopted for German are the Intonation Phrase and the Intermediate Phrase (for a definition of the Intermediate Phrase see below). There is no homogeneous definition of the Intonation Phrase (IP). However, the notion of an IP as an utterance forming a prosodic unit is largely accepted in the literature. One or several Focus Domains are grouped into one IP for which there is no clear-cut criterion, in particular the syntax/prosody component alone does not parse all sentences in unambiguous IPs. Instead several criteria interact to define end boundaries:

60

- Syntactico-prosodic: The boundaries of an IP correspond to those of some syntactic constituent. - Timing: An IP can be preceded and followed by a pause. - Metrical: the metrical structure provides an additional clue, viz. the presence of a most prominent accent. - Tonal: the boundary of an IP is sometimes tonally marked by a boundary tone. Pitch range adjustment plays a role, as well. If all these facultative criteria apply, an Intonation Phrase is defined with great certainty. Otherwise, the more criteria that are satisfied, the more likely is the boundary of an Intonation Phrase. In general an IP has perceptible boundaries that coincide with syntactic boundaries. IP boundaries are thus unlikely to occur in the middle of lowranking syntactic constituents like PPs or object NPs. Partitioning a sentence into IPs can sometimes help to disambiguate it on the syntactic level. Consider the following examples: (6)(i) Das ist meine SCHWESTER, Francoise. This is my sister, Frangoise.' (ii) DONNERWETTER, hat er gebrüllt 'Blast, he roared.' Either of these sentences has two readings: if the expressions Frangoise and hat er gebrüllt are provided with a nuclear accent, then two IPs are built, according to the metrical criteria. Francoise is an apposition and hat er gebrüllt is an exclamation (and what was shouted was not necessarily the expression Donnerwetter but more likely something else). If the expressions FranQOise and hat er gebrüllt are tonally flat, only one IP is built. These expressions are to be interpreted as a vocative and a report, respectively; in this case he did shout: 'Donnerwetter!'. Similar cases are: (7) (i)(Was hai er gekauft?} What did he buy?' Drei EIER (...) hat er gekauft 'Three eggs, he bought.' (ii) Ziemlich LANGWEILIG, (...) dein Freund5 'Rather boring, your friend.1 5

In English these expressions are called intonational tags; von Essen's (1956:34-5) German term is melodischer Nachlauf.

61

Here, too, it makes a difference whether gekauft and Freund are accented or left without prominence: tentatively, an accent on gekauft and Freund favors a reading where drei Eier and ziemlich langweilig are preposed or topicalized, whereas the absence of accent favors an interpretation of these sentences where gekauft and Freund are postposed. The tonal structure is not the only way to mark the final boundary of an IP. In many cases the duration of the last syllable is increased or a pause is introduced at the end of the IP6. In Beckman & Pierrehumbert's model both a phrase accent and a boundary tone are always present at the end of an Intonation Phrase, because the end of an Intonation Phrase is always the end of an Intermediate Phrase. Intonation Phrases have the following schematic structure (T stands for an undefined tone which can have the value H or L and T* stands for a simple or complex pitch accent): (8) [ [ ...

T* ... T]ip

[ ...

T* ... T]lp T%]IP

In this section I will show that, although German intonation bears many similarities to English intonation, there are some crucial differences that can be expressed in a principled way. We will see that there is no need for two boundary tones at the end of each German Intonation Phrase, because the set of possible postnuclear realizations is more restricted in German than it is in English. In Chapter 1 it was shown that, in one respect at least, the intonation is influenced by focus: focus structure determines accent location. But since accent location is dependent on the focus-background structure of the sentence, the question arises if there is any tonal correlation between the realization of the nuclear accent and the size of the focussed constituent. In other words, in a sentence with a given nuclear accent, does it make any difference to the tonal realization of the sentence if it has broad focus or narrow focus? This section is devoted to this question. The sentences used for this Chapter7 were all designed and recorded for the experiments reported here. There were 100 sentences, read aloud by three native speakers of Standard German (all in all 375 tokens, because some sentences had different realizations). The sentences were recorded and analysed by a speech analysis program (CSL 4300 Kay). The 6

7

However, a pause alone is not always a reliable boundary marker, because it might indicate hesitation, as well. See Appendix.

62 speakers were chosen for their ability to speak naturally, but, of course, the sentences lack the naturalness found in spontaneous discourse. Unfortunately, the use of spontaneously occuring language was not possible because of the required quality of the recording. It must be mentioned that the choice of the sentences resulted from several years of careful listening to naturally occuring language, as well as from various pre-experiment recordings. This remark holds for the rest of the described recorded material as well; in no case does the intonational description of some kind of utterance lean on a single recording of the mentioned sentence. Rather, the results reported here were confirmed by several native speakers, and recorded several times. For the perception experiments, five native speakers of German read aloud sentences containing a narrow or a broad focus. There were twenty minimal pairs (i.e. 200 tokens). The sentences were recorded on a DAT recorder (Aiwa HD-S1). Five other native speakers were asked to decide for each sentence if it was the answer to the question inducing the narrow focus reading or the broad focus reading. 2.3.1. Nuclear accents and focus structure Pitch accents in nuclear position are always either associated with either focussed material or with focus exponents of a whole-focussed sentence. This section examines sentences with an early nuclear accent: in some of them the early nuclear accent stands for a broad focus (the whole sentence is focussed), whereas in others the accent stands for a narrow focus (the focus is restricted to the word carrying the accent). 1. Subject-accented sentences with a broad focus. Though in most German sentences a broad focus cannot come from a single accent on the subject, sentences have been discussed in Chapter 1 in which exactly this happens. Some of the sentences of this type used in the experiment are given in (9): (9) i. ( Hast du heute die Nachrichten gehört?) 'Did you hear the news today?' Ja, [FD GORBATSCHOW ist verhaftet worden] 'Yes. Gorbachev was arrested.1 ii.

(Warum bist du so bedrückt?) Why are you so depressed?' [FD Meine BRIEFTASCHE ist weg] 'My wallet has disappeared.'

63

iii.

(Was machst da denn fur ein Gesicht?) Why are you pulling such a face?1 (FD Mein ZAHN tut weh] 'My tooth hurts.'

2. Sentences with a narrow focus. The second class of sentences, examined in this section, also has a nuclear accent early in the sentence, but this time the accent forces a narrow-focus reading: in a sentence of the type exemplified in (10), only the preposed PP bears an accent, with the remainder of the sentence supplying the background. There is no reading available according to which the whole sentence is understood as focussed. (10)

(Wohin ist sie denn gefahren?) Where did she go?' (FD IF Nach BERLIN] ist sie gefahren] 'She went to Berlin.1

A dialogue like (11) is ill-formed if the part ans Meer gefahren is not already one of the conversation's topics. (11)

(Was war gestern los?) What happened yesterday?' IFD IF Die ganze FAMILIE ] ist ans Meer gefahren] "The whole family went to the sea.'

If the realization of the tones were sensitive to the focus structure, we would predict that the sentences of the first type and those of the second type would be realized and perceived differently. However, no obvious difference between the realization of a pitch accent standing for a broad focus and a pitch accent standing for a narrow focus could be observed (or perceived). Compare the sentences in Fig.7.8 The same result is obtained in sentences with bi- and trisyllabic nuclear words. In Fig.8, as well, no difference is made in the tonal realization of the sentences with a broad focus and those with a narrow focus. In each case the peak of the accent is realized on the accented syllable and the fall is realized on the syllable immediately following the stressed one. The size of the stressed word seems to play no role in the location of the fall9 (see Pierrehumbert 1980 for a different result for English). 8

I am ignoring accents standing for a lexical contrast, as in (i): (i) A: Ist Maria nach Hannover gefahren? 'Did Maria go to Hanover?' B: Nein, sie ist nach [p Berlin] gefahren. 'No. she went to Berlin.' This kind of accent is realized with an even steeper fall on the nuclear syllable. See Uhmann (199la).

64

Such a contour is analyzed with a bitonal pitch accent H*L. The starred part of the bitonal tone is aligned with the stressed syllable and the unstarred part (the trail tone), is aligned with the following syllable.

More experiments are necessary to verify this hypothesis.

65

54-f-l·

ϋί! I

Λ *

4 •ί

•

4

•-f-

έ

lIV LLLLLLili I ! I

!

H

d

i

L

Fig.7 Falling contours of sentences with narrow (a and b) and with broad focus (c and d): the nuclear word is a monosyllable.

66 Μ

T| ί I

LJ

lg" ·η·τ

I

I

•si I

I

I

I

I

I

!

ΗΗ-Η I I . I I I I

I

δ

Fig.8 Falling contours of sentences with narrow (a and b) and with broad focus (c and d): the nuclear words are bi- and trisyllabic.

67

A similar result holds in sentences with a rising nucleus: here, too, there is no difference between the realization of a pitch accent standing for a broad focus and a pitch accent standing for a narrow focus. In Fig.9 the rising accents and the postnuclear material are realized in the same way, whether the focus is broad or narrow. There is an optional boundary tone in sentences with a rising contour, especially if the postnuclear material is very short. The status of this boundary tone will be discussed in the next section. Again the same result holds for words of different sizes (Fig. 10). The rising nuclear tone is represented by L*H: a starred low tone associates with the stressed syllable and a high trail tone with the next one. In the sentences displayed in Figs 7 to 10 a tonal movement of some importance is realized on the nuclear syllable and the immediately following one. There is no difference whatsoever between the realization of a sentence involving a broad focus and one involving a narrow focus. In contexts in which eventive (or thetical) sentences like (9) have a narrow focus on their subject, as illustrated in (12), the realization remains the same. Compare Fig. 11: (12)

a A: Wer ist verhaftet worden? Who was arrested?' B: [F GORBATSCHOW] ist verhaftet worden. 'Gorbachev was arrested.' b. A: Was tut weh? What hurts?1 B: [F Mein ZAHN] tut weh. 'My tooth hurts.1

68

Ι

Ι

Ι

Ι

v c

!

llo

Ι

«

Ι 1

Fig.9 Rising contours of sentences with narrow (a and b) and with broad focus (c and d): the nuclear word is monosyllabic.

69 J

Ι

I

i I

I

δ! ; -ί Ο |

Pig. 10 Rising contours of sentences with narrow (a and b) and with broad focus (c and d): the nuclear words are bi- and trisyllabic.

70

I-0

k

s*

l l

! ! l

3

1' =10

Flg. 11 Contours of sentences with narrow focus on the subject.

71

Perceptually also, in cases in which the focus exponent bears the nuclear accent, it is not possible to decide unambiguously if sentences have a narrow or a broad focus. Minimal pairs of sentences bearing an early nuclear accent were recorded. In each case the same sentence was read twice by each of the five speakers, once as the answer of a question inducing a narrow focus and once as the answer of a question inducing a broad focus (13). The realizations were pseudo-randomized. (13)

i.A; Wer ist verhaftet worden? "Who was arrested?'

B: [F GORBATSCHOW] isi verhaftet worden. 'Gorbachev was arrested.' ii.A: Hast du heute die Nachrichten gehört? 'Did you hear the news today?1 B: Ja, [F GORBATSCHOW ist verhaftet worden]

Five other native speakers were asked to decide for each realization if it was an answer to the question inducing the broad focus or to the question inducing the narrow focus reading. The results showed that the speakers decided at random. The natural conclusion is that there is no perceptual difference between the two types of sentences, so that the speakers had no objective clue allowing them to interpret the sentences. Summing up, the results of this section are twofold: - the tonal realization of an accent as the focus exponent of a Focus Domain cannot show the size of this Focus Domain. - the last tonal fall in falling contours is realized immediately after the nuclear accent (and not as a boundary tone at the end of the Intonation Phrase). These results induce a different phonological representation of the Intonation Phrase's final boundary in German from the one proposed by Pierrehumbert for English. 2.3.2. Phonological representation of the tonal structure

In this section the German Intonation Phrase is given a phonological representation on the basis of the results of the preceding section. We saw that Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) propose two obligatory tones at the end of each Intonation Phrase: a phrase accent and a boundary tone. The boundary tone signals the end of the Intonation Phrase, and the

72

phrase accent the end of the Intermediate Phrase. Besides these two tones, each Intermediate Phrase contains at least one pitch accent and possibly more. The representation of German Intonation Phrases differs slightly from that of English IP's: apart from phrasing, pitch accents and a facultative high boundary tone are sufficient to represent tonal contours. The phrase accent can be dispensed with in German, because the functions it fulfills in English can be represented by the trail tone of a bitonal tone and the phrasing, which exists independently of the tonal structure anyway. Let's first examine the role of the boundary tone. In many cases the boundary tone at the end of the IP is an abstract entity. There is no tonal movement marking the end of the German IP in an overall falling contour. On the contrary, if a fall is realized on the last word of an IP, it is perceived as a nuclear accent. To see this, compare the realizations of the sentence Die Sonne scheint (The sun is shining') in Fig. 12. SVi>ILH

DftTfl

UIEU

LINKING

SHOU

Sl'LftK

flNBLVZE

3*>chl : BASSA23.NSP

i>Ybitn vmn υ ι ι υ CM>chl : BASSA24.

LINKING

SH U

UTLOK

Tin· • »PITCH

a.

b. \_

_BJLJL_S_JLA.!!~8

» c

h

c

I

n

I

D l c S o n n c

s c h e i n t

Tin« (««c)

Fig. 12 Two contours of Die Sonne scheint (The sun is shining.')

Fig. 12a is the neutral realization of this sentence, with a unique accent on Sonne. The high pitch accent H* is realized on the first syllable of Sonne and the trail tone L on the second syllable. After that the contour remains flat. The end of the sentence which corresponds to the end of the IP shows no tonal movement of any significance. Fig.l2b, on the other hand, illustrates a sentence realized with two falling movements: one on Sonne and one on scheint. The second movement is perceived as a

73

pitch accent and not as a boundary tone. Perceptually, the difference between Fig.l2a and Fig.l2b is important. In a rising contour, however, the realization of a boundary tone is much more natural. Consider (14). (14)

(Maria m chte ihre blaue Hose anziehen.) 'Maria wants to put on her blue trousers.' HAT Maria eine blaue Hose? 'Does Maria have blue trousers?' iVSTEM

DnTft

UIEU

LIMKIhG

HOU

EDIT

PtnK

ΤΙ»·

MftCKOS

LOG

1.92888
PITCH

Hat

IFfl

B.ΒβθβΒ
chl : BASICE25.HSF

M a r i a

e i n

H o s

Tlrv· < m « c )

Fig. 13 A high boundary tone. Contour of Hat Maria eine blaue Hose?

Example (14). illustrated in Fig. 13, shows a sentence containing a verum focus (H hle 1992): the accented constituent is the finite part of the sentence (Chapter 1). The syllable -se of Hose has a high boundary tone. There is no case in which it can be interpreted as an accent, because this syllable is unstressable, like all German syllables containing a schwa or a syllabic sonorant as their nucleus (see Fery 1991). Thus, the boundary tone is necessary in the representation if it is realized as a tonal movement 10 , as in Fig. 13. In the other cases, no boundary tone is needed in the representation. In Fig. 12. as in all falling contours, the end of the Intonation Phrase is not delimited by a boundary 10

Lindsey (1985) proposes to eliminate the low boundary tone notationally from the representation in English because it is the default value of the boundary tone. According to his proposal, only the H% should be represented, because it is the marked value of the boundary tone.

74

tone; rather, there is a Final Lowering effect: the low part of the nuclear falling accent is lower than it would be if the same accent were not Intonation Phrase final (see Chapter 5). As to the phrase accent, Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) assign two functions for it: first, it controls the melody between the pitch accent and the boundary tone, and secondly, it delimits the smaller intonational Intermediate Phrase constituent. For systematic reasons, each function of the phrase accent will be examined independently. I will show that there is no need for a phrase accent in German, neither in its first, nor in its second function. First function: The role the English phrase accent plays in controlling the melody between the nuclear accent and the boundary tone is taken over by the unstarred part of a bitonal nuclear tone called the trail tone: in German the nuclear accent is generally followed by an abrupt fall or rise, and for this reason it is more economical to postulate that the postnuclear tonal realization is an integral part of the pitch accent. The trail tone spreads to the end of the IP. Second function: the phrase accent delimits the Intermediate Phrase tonally. Beckman & Pierrehumbert suggest that Intermediate Phrases are built in the following contexts (15). (15) (i) a sequence of modifiers which are to be interpreted in parallel: [j p [j a round-windowed] (i sun-illuminating sunroom] ] (ii) muti-phrasal uti-phrasal yes-no questi questions: [ they gave [ orange mar marmelade] [ lemon-oil marmelade] t and watermelon-rind marmelade?]] (iii) Tags: [} Mary will win]]i Manny] ] (Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986)

75 300

ZOO

round-

windowed

sun- illufninoted

400 -

300

200

'\

They go« or any» mormolode

lemon-oil mofmolode ond wotermelon-rind mormolod· ?

300 -

200 -

100 -

Fig. 14 Intermediate phrases in English. From Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986)

In all the constructions listed in (15) there is a tonal boundary, but a full Intonation Phrase break would be too strong. Beckman & Pierrehumbert thus propose that a phrase accent serve as a boundary tone for this kind of Intermediate Phrase. Similar German examples are listed in (16): (16)

(i) a sequence of modifiers which are to be interpreted in parallel: I lp [ die kleine] [{ altmodische Bahn] ] The small, old fashioned train.1 (ii) muti-phrasal yes-no question: [Ip[ipWbHen Sie Orangensaft]

76

[j Apfelsa } Iipoder iieber Kaffee?]] 'Do you want orange juice, apple juice or coffee?' (iii) parenthetical expressions: [jp [j Ich will was essen] [{ sagte der Menschenfresser] ] Ί want to eat something, said the ogre.' LIMKIMC;

Die

k l e i n e

snou

a

l

t m o d ls e h e B a h

β.βββββ


3.β719β


n

Tin.

•;V;;TI.M

ηητη BASICE27.NSP

Tin· •B>PITCH

β>

b.

Wollen Sie Orangensaft

A pfel s aft

Ttn·

Flg. 15 (a and b) Intermediate phrases in German

oder lieber

Ka

ffeel

77 .INKING Dn>chl : MSICE2B.NSP

:;nou

si'i:ni


Tin·

a.869

β>

c.

_^ Ich «rill was

irn

V v^ v_r e ssen

sagte der Menschen

Iresser

Fig. 15 (c) Intermediate phrases in German

In those contexts, the assumption of prosodic constituents of the size of the Intermediate Phrase is very welcome. Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986:288) insist on the fact that the phrasing of an utterance is 'highly facultative1 and 'in extremely slow or emphatic speech the intermediate boundaries shown could easily be replaced by a full Intonation Phrase boundary.' Of course, these remarks carry over to German. An obvious consequence is the impossibility of defining the Intermediate Phrase division of a sentence on the basis of the syntactic structure only. On the contrary, and similarly to what was said about Intonation Phrases, the formation of intonational constituents depends on a host of variable factors like focus structure, style of speech etc. The way an accent is realized to signal a FD can correpond to an Intermediate Phrase, but it does not have to. For this reason, in the parts of the present book pertaining to the tonal structure, I systematically use the term Intermediate Phrase. It is the tonal realization of the phrasing that is of interest here: in German, once again, the trail tone of a bitonal tone is sufficient to delimit an Intermediate Phrase tonally: there is no need for a boundary tone at the end of the Intermediate Phrase. However, the amount of tonal movement associated with the nuclear tone (or with the last bitonal tone in an Intermediate Phrase) is determined by phrasing 11 . Thus, in a declarative falling contour, the fall of the nuclear 11

Final Lowering (Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984) in German has not yet been sufficiently examined. My remarks must therefore remain sketchy and tentative.

78

tone is larger than the fall of the prenuclear tones. Summing up, it has been shown in this section that a phrase accent is not necessary, whether in its first function (control of the melody between the nuclear accent and the boundary tone), or in its second one (delimitation of the Intermediate Phrase in German as in English). So the tonal structure of a German Intonation Phrase has the schematic structure given in (17): (17)

[ [ ...

T*T]ip

[ ...

T*T]ip (T%)],p

The difference between the schematic representation of the English Intonation Phrase in (8) and the German one in (17) reflects the fact that English has a richer inventory of postnuclear realizations than German. The sentences examined so far are assigned the following tonal structures: (18) i. Overall falling contours:

H*L [,P dpMein ZAHN tut weh]] ii. Overall rising contours without boundary tone:

L*H (IP [^GEBADET hat sie ihn?]] iii. Overall rising contours with a boundary tone: L*H

H%

(IP [lp HAT sie eine blaue Hose? ]] iv. Overall falling contour of a sequence of Intermediate Phrases: H*L [,p (j die KLEINE]

H*

H*L

[j ALTMODISCHE BAHN] ]

A possible realization of the sentence illustrated in Fig. 15b is given in

. Overall rising contour of a sequence of Intermediate Phrases:

79 L*H

L*H

L*H

[JP lipWollen Sie OFIANGENSAFT] [} APFELSAFT] ^ oder lieber KAFFEE?]]

2.4. Conclusion As in English, the well-formed tonal string in German is realized in the Intonation Phrase, which consists of one or more pitch accents and a facultative high boundary tone. The Intonation Phrase can be divided into Intermediate Phrases that are smaller intonational phrases. The Intermediate Phrase is tonally delimited by the trail tone of its last bitonal tone or by a facultative high boundary tone. It has been shown in a number of cases that a supplementary tone is not necessary in the representation of German intonation, because the German trail tone fulfils both functions attributed to the phrase accent in English by Beckman & Pierrehumbert: controlling the melody between the nuclear accent and the boundary tone of the Intonation Phrase, and marking the boundary tone of the Intermediate Phrase. In German, a focussed constituent is realized as a pitch accent. The realization of the pitch accent gives no clue as to the size of the focussed constituent. This is determined by other, contextual factors. As is going to become clear, the theory presented in the following chapters differs from Pierrehumbert's original proposals in other respects as well, the most evident of which is an idea first expressed and applied to English by Gussenhoven (1984), viz. that some seemingly very different tonal structures can be related via a tone linking rule. Whereas Pierrehumbert does not differentiate between an underlying and a surface structure of intonation, Gussenhoven proposes a derivation for some tonal contours; two adjacent intonation phrases can be linked to form only one IP. The nuclear tone of the first IP then reduces because the attributes of finality have disappeared. The resulting prenuclear tone has a different form than the underlying bi- (or tri-) tonal tone from which it derives; still, they are both related. This aspect of the theory will be developed in chapter 4. The second important modification of Pierrehumbert's theory is the addition of tone modifications as first proposed by Ladd (1978,1980), who showed that some types of intonation (those with tones only running half the way up or down) are modifications of primary contours. Ladd called this effect stylization (Chapter 3). But first, in the next chapter, the realizations of nuclear accents are described.

Chapter 3: Nuclear tones Overview Per de/inifionem, 'nucleus* designates the last pitch accent of the Intonation Phrase which is generally the one realized or perceived as most prominent. In German, nuclear and prenuclear accents have different sets of realizations. Whereas a nuclear accent is always at least bitonal, with the trail tone standing for a fair amount of fundamental frequency movement, the prenuclear tones can be monotonal or at least the amount of movement associated with the trail tone can be reduced (see Chapter 4). Another important difference between prenuclear and nuclear tones is the possible modifications. Nuclear tones display more variety in their realization than prenuclear ones. This chapter is concerned with the realizations of the nuclear tones. The repertoire of German pitch accents consists of two basic tones, H* and L*, and associated trail tones. In the first section, only nuclear tones that are followed by a high or a low trail tone (or a complex trail tone consisting of a sequence of H and L) are examined. Some further possible realizations of the nuclear tones are discussed in section 2. Section 3 is concerned with the meaning of nuclear tones.

3.1. Four nuclear contours In Chapter 2, the two starred tones H* and L* were considered as morphemes 1 : they cannot be further analyzed into meaningful parts. They can have a trail tone adjoined to them which can be simple (L, H) or complex (HL, LH...): for instance H*L is a falling tone and L*H a rising one. Starred tones are associated with metrically strong syllables and sometimes other syllables as well. The star accompanying the pitch accent means that this tone must first be associated with the starred tone-bearing unit (syllable) in an autosegmental framework. The starred tones and the starred syllables are the most prominent autosegments of their respective tiers. Both stand for an accented unit. Schematically, the nucleus of an IP can be provisionally represented as in (1): Although I am not sure that the use of this terminology is entirely adequate, I still use the term 'morpheme', because ever since Solinger introduced it (see. e.g., 1958:145). It has been commonly used to show that the forms of the accents are constant and that they have an independent meaning.

82 (1)

...

T*

T

t*

t

T t

t

T is short for tone (high or low) and t means tone bearing unit (TBU: in German, the syllable). After the starred elements' association has taken place in the way illustrated in (1), the remaining autosegments can associate in turn. Besides the two starred tones, H* and L*. the trail tone(s) associate(s) with the syllable(s) immediately following the nuclear accent. An H% at the end of an IP stands for the high boundary tone, needed in the representation of the tonal structure of some German final contours. In the autosegmental representation, this boundary tone is associated with the last syllable. (2) gives some possible autosegmental associations. T* (2)

I

T ... H%

i. t*

t

T*

iii.

I ... tI

ii.

T*

T

t*

t t t

I

T

t*

In (2i) a high boundary tone associates with the last syllable of the IP. (2ii) shows how a bitonal tone associates with many syllables, and (2iii) how it associates with only one syllable.

3.1.1. Simple falling tone: H* L Native speakers of German perceive the falling realization on the nuclear accent as the most natural one in declarative sentences. H*L (3) i. Tom wül MILCH trinken. Tom wants to drink milk.' H*L ii. Morgen ist ein ANderer Tag. Tomorrow is another day.'

83 κν;;τι:η

υ>ιτη

υιι.υ

LIMKINC

ί,ιιου

!;ι>κηι< 33>

ΤίΜ

§>

•B>PITCM

Tom will MILCH

trinken

TIM PITCH

Morgen ist ein

ANDERER Tag Tin·

Butter...

91

The rise eventually becomes so small that it can disappear, the resulting intonation having flat (or level) tones. Ladd (1978) classified this kind of listing ('with an implication of "etc"') as stylized (see 3.2.1). But it lacks the main characteristic of stylized intonation, viz. spreading of the starred tone (see next section). These two tonal patterns should receive different analyses. I am not sure how to analyze this kind of tone (with L*H like the other rising contours, or with L*M, see 3.2.1), and leave the problem open. 3.1.3. Fall-rise H* L H% H* L H% is a tritonal movement. The boundary tone H% realizes an additional movement in the direction opposite to that of the trail tone. H*L

H%

(12) i. Wo hast du den WAGEN geparkt ? In this sentence H*L is realized on Wagen and H% on geparkt. H* L

H%

ii. Mögen Sie ROGGENbrötchen?2 'Do you like ryebread rolls?1 This tonal pattern usually occurs over several syllables. The realization of both movements on a single syllable is slightly marked. iii.

M

H*LH% Warst du schon in BERLIN? "Were you ever in Berlin?1

H* L H% is also used by small children when asking a whole list of questions:

iv.

H*L H% Wer holt mich vom Kindergarten? MAMA? "Who's picking me up from kindergarten? Mommy?'

It is also used to express a threat, in which case the realization on one syllable poses no problem: H* L H% v. DU! Hör auf Ernie zu schlagen! You! Stop hitting Ernie!' For this example I am indebted to Carlos Gussenhoven.

92

TlM

1.17·

PITCH

Β>

χΛ.

Wo hosi

du den WAGEN TlM

geparkt?

Flg.lOa Wo hast du den WAGEN geparkt? Dran

UILU

I.IMKIMC;

Tin·

•»PITCH

DU/

Fig. lOb DU! (H r aufEmte zu schlagen!)

The autosegmental association is shown in (13). H*L

H%

(13) i. Wo hosi du dos AUTO geparkt ?

93 H* L H%

ii.

DU!

The question must arise as to why we postulate the existence of a H% instead of analyzing all fall-rises as H* L H. This would allow getting rid of the boundary tone altogether. There is, however, an argument that speaks against such an analysis: The final rise in H* L H% is always associated with the last syllable; an association like the following is impossible: (14)

H*LH *Wb hast du das AUTO geparkt?

Thus the interpretation of the last tonal movement as a boundary tone seems to better correspond to the observed data. 3.1.4. Rise-fall: L* H L

This tritonal movement replaces Ladd's delayed peak. For Ladd (1983), [delayed peak] is one intonational feature among many (but see 3.2.2 for a general discussion). He used such features in the tone-sequence analysis in order to make the intonational description easier to handle from a linguistic point of view. His source of inspiration for inventing the feature [delayed peak] is the treatment of the Swedish word accent by Bruce (1977) and Bruce and G rding (1978). In all Swedish dialects the peak of Accent 2 is assigned later than that of Accent 1. ACCENT I

ACCENT

II

rv ι c ι ν ι c ι 'ν ι c; ι ν ι c ι Fig. 11 (from Bruce 1977:64)

Ladd proposes to treat the difference between Accent 1 and Accent 2 by assigning the feature [delayed peak] to Accent 2, thereby indicating that

94

the phonological association of the intonation peak with the metrical strong syllable is delayed, i.e. the peak is aligned later in the segmental material with Accent 2 than with Accent 1. This phonological association occurs independently of the actual phonetic realization, which can vary considerably from dialect to dialect. According to Ladd, this feature can also be applied to German scooped intonation: (1983:731)

(15) Düsseldorf (scooped)

Düsseldorf (plain)

Since Ladd does not comment on his example, he gives the impression that the feature [delayed peak] has the same usage and meaning in German as it has in English. But this is not the case, for there is no delayed peak association in German. However, something similar does exist in German, viz. a tritonal movement: a rise followed by a fall. This configuration has relatively few possible usages. Pheby (1980:847) gives the following examples: L* (16)

i.

H L

SI CHER 1

'sure

L* HL Ü.

GERN

Td love to.'

L* H L m.

WEIß ICH AUCH

know.'

This intonation expresses something like Of course'. Another use of the same contour is found in television detective serials when the police inspector adresses a suspect (to threaten her, to catch her attention, or simply to call her): iv.

L* HL Frau KRAMER

If there are three syllables, each of the three tones is associated with one of them. (v)

L* H L RAPHAEL

This configuration is common in some Southern dialects (Swabian, for instance), where it is associated with a final nuclear word (Fig. 12b).

95

Tin·

β.βββββ
PITCH

β>

Gern! Tin·

•l—t—I—t-

β>

•B>PITCH

JUNGEN WEINEN nicht.

Fig. 4 JUNGEN WEINEN nicht.

There is nothing special about these sentences. Let us now see how the first nuclear tone can change when the two phrases are linked together.

4.2 Linking of tones As has been mentioned several times, phrasing is highly unstable. It is often the case that one phrase can be divided up into two or more phrases, or, conversely, two phrases can be put together and build only one phrase. This restructuring of intonational phrasing depends on the speech style and the degree of acquaintance between the conversationists among other things (see Chapter 1). In this section, the sequences introduced in the preceding section are examined in the cases in which only one phrase is realized, viz. when the first of the two nuclear tones has become a prenuclear tone. In this case, prosodic correlates of phrasing (such as pause, lengthened final syllables, large amount of fall and rise, etc) have been suppressed. If the resulting sentence is syntactically ambiguous, the linking can have an influence on the possible readings - as in (1) - but in the majority of cases, it does not. The linking of tones, as proposed by Gussenhoven (1984), is a kind of tonal sandhi-rule which can apply as soon as at least one pitch accent is in a prenuclear position in an IP: the prenuclear material is then no longer

117

strictly bitonal; only the nuclear tone is fully realized as a bitonal tone. As was already mentioned in the preceding chapter, Gussenhoven (1984) distinguishes three morphemic nuclear tones in British English: the fall, the fall-rise and the rise. Prenuclear tones (or at least some of them) are derived by the following rule that covers both partial and complete linking (T stands for a tone whose value can be H or L): (5)

TONE LINKING (Gussenhoven 1984:238) : T* (T) T

->

T*

l 0 This rule describes two different things: first, partial linking occuring 'when the last tone element of the penultimate tone is moved across the intervening unaccented stretch to a position adjacent to the final tone', and second, complete linking occuring 'when this last tone is deleted.' Here are two tables of all derivations possible in English:

118

χ

β) 4J

N

01 4l 10

) J

Γ

3 >

\ *? χ

.3

Pig. 5a From Gussenhoven (1984:241)

J ^ •g .1

*1 »^

119

JJ κ

S

T* + T*T 1 34

In the case of a complete tone linking, the tone of the first pitch accent interpolates between the two starred tones. (9) says that a bitonal tone becomes monotonal in a non-boundary environment. This tone deletion rule expresses a phonetic fact: the melodic realization is different on each side of the arrow. Gussenhoven, in his description of tone linking in English, invokes interpolation in (9) to explain why there are so few differences between partial and complete linking. Schematically, we have the following representation that must be understood as being derived from (7): (10)

σ

σ*

I

σ ( ...σ...)

σ

τ*

σ*

σ

σ

I I (τ%) I

τ* τ

Applying (6) to our cases (1) to (4), we obtain four possibilities: (11)

(1. H*L 2. H*L 3. L*H 4. L*H

H*L ->· L*H -» L*H -> H*L ->

H* L H*L) H* L L *H L* H L*H L* H H*L

However, case one does not seem to appear. Instead, something equivalent to a partially linking of two falling tones is obtained by downstep of the tones. The second fall begins lower and falls lower than the first one. The total linking rule (9) gives the following tonal structures: (12)

1. 2. 3. 4.

H*L H*L L*H L*H

H*L L*H L*H H*L

-> -> -4 -»

H* H* L* L*

H*L L*H L*H H*L

Fig.6 shows all possible realizations of sentences (l)-(4): no linking, partial linking and complete linking.

122

il (β 3

I υ

l

l

i ! J S

s

ει5l Jσ

οu

to l

3t tx

l

C C

l

C

'S

r>

nncnos

i.oc nnc

TIM ( « · ο » •B>FITCH

B>

Eine

blaue

'Melone! TIM

(««Ο

Fig. 8 Eine blaue Melone! Ά blue melon!'

In (21), the nuclear accent on Melone is realized as H*L. The lexical stress of blau is realized as a low pitch accent (L*). The speaker was asked to express astonishment. This section has examined some reduced and monotonal realizations of prenuclear tones. As mentioned above, prenuclear tones can also be bitonal. The next section is concerned with one kind of bitonal prenuclear tone, the rising one. especially when it is in a context in which it is followed by a falling nuclear tone. This tone sequence has been called a hat pattern. It will be argued that a speaker chooses to realize a hat pattern when certain discourse structures are met.

4.3 Hat pattern Though it is not possible to map types of sentences with overall falling or rising contours with certainty, some tendencies do exist. For instance, the nuclear accent of a declarative sentence is generally realized as a

129

bitonal falling tone, H*L (see Chapter 2). In this case, the focus accent standing for the (last) focussed constituent, broad or narrow, determines the overall falling contour of the sentence. On the other hand, sentences denoting certain types of questions, like echo-questions, or surprise generally have an overall rising contour determined by either their nuclear accent, or a high boundary tone. Regardless of how the overall contour of a sentence looks, if a prenuclear accent is realized as a bitonal tone, then it can be falling or rising. In this section, some of the factors determining the choice of a rising accent in the prenuclear position of a declarative sentence will be examined. 4.3.1 Topic accent and other prenuclear rising accents 4.3.1.1 Topic Topicalized constituents, like geschlafen in (22). often have a rising contour. L*H H*L (22) [IP [,pGESCHLAFEN /] [lphoi KEINER \υοη uns]] 'None of us slept.1 SVSTEH

μητη υικυ L I N K I M C ; • BASSA3l.NSP

\

ί

+-

ι

SHOU

SPKIIK θ.θβθθθ(

r t-f-t-~t t—ι ~r r~M—i Ί.Ι1.ί_1Ι1ΙΙΙΙΙΙ!Ι|ΙΙΙΐΙΙΙ!ΙΙΙ|ΙΙΙΓ^Ζ^ΙΙΙ|1ΙΙ.1ΙΙ t

ι «ιTin·

t

i

l·-

l

i

•B>PITCH

G es ch

I

i— I -I

1.96738


K/v

l SB

Tin* ( M O >

2.168

1Ζ3>

DB>W1CKY2.NSP

-32 Tin· DD>PITCH

se

1.93·

19 «οβϋοο \

8>

b.

Flg. 15 Two contours of John doesn't drink: because he is unhappy Ladd comments: "In the fall-rise sentences, the negation applies to the focus constituent (All and because he's unhappy); the sentence tends to be interpreted as Not all the men went and ft is noi because he's unhappy that John drinks. In the fall sentence, on the other hand, the negation applies to the verb, and we get None of the men went, and It is because he's unhappy that John doesn't drink." (Ladd 1980:146).

149

See also Bing (1979:275ff). Jackendoff (1977:261). Kadmon & Roberts (1986) and Steedman (1991) for more about this use of the fall-rise in English. The point that I wanted to make by giving such a detailed account of the literature about the English fall-rise is that there is a striking similarity between some uses of the rise in German and the fall-rise in English. The choice of a rising tone in a prenuclear position is not arbitrary, but is governed by different discourse structures and semantic factors. 4.3.2. Two different hat patterns The hat pattern is a very common tone sequence arising in many instances of two sequencing accents, whether in one or in two phrases. We will see in the next chapter that the choice of a downstep contour is perhaps as common as a hat pattern, but their contexts of use are not always interchangeable. The derivation of a German hat pattern is not straightforward, because it has two different accent structure sources, one of which involves a complete linking, whereas the other contains two Intonation Phrases or two Intermediate Phrases; according to my analysis, it is pure coincidence that they should have the same form. I will call them hat contour 1 and hat contour 2. Hat contour 1 The first hat contour is a sequence of two completely linked pitch accents, the first of which is a high prenuclear pitch accent (H*) which is derived from an underlying H*L. The second is a falling (H*L) nuclear tone. This configuration is illustrated by the following examples: (50)

i. Die NEUEN MÖBEL 'the new furniture' ii. BALD ist sie DA 'She will be there soon.' iii. Dein W U N S C H ist mir BEFEHL (von Essen 1956:24) 'Your wish is my command.' iv. Die LÄDEN der INNENSTADT 'The shops of downtown' v. weil er MARIA ein BUCH gibt 'because he gives Mary a book'

150

die

neuen

M ö bei

Fig. 16a Die neuen Möbel

H

v>o

Z

a

100 'it

iic

Fig 165 Bcdd ist sie da.

In most examples in (50). it is possible to divide the utterance into two phrases, each with a falling nuclear tone (the reader is advised to try and say the examples with two falling phrases); however, the realization of the sentence with a prenuclear monotonal accent is more natural in a context where no special emphasis is needed. Having only one nuclear accent even adds to the cohesion of the text. The voice remains (or can remain) on a high level between the two H tones because there is no phrasing between the two pitch accents and only a small number of unstressed syllables between them. This hat contour is an optional realization, depending on the speech rate and on the number of unstressed syllables between the two high tones. Thus, this first hat contour is in a certain way unstable; it can readily

151

split into two parts, depending on a certain number of factors, including the degree of emphasis attributed to the first accent, the speech rate, and the number of unstressed syllables (a hat contour of this kind is usually relatively short). Hat contour 2 The second kind of hat contour has been extensively described in the preceding section. It differs from the first, not only because it must be analyzed in a different way, but also because, unlike the first, it is obligatory. The two hat contours are not clearly distinguished in the literature. Wunderlich (1988:12) merely mentions the possibility that his Brückenakzent can be separated by a boundary. The main difference between hat contour 1 and hat contour 2 is the number of phrases involved in each case. The first contour is realized in one phrase and has an alternative realization in two falling phrases, i.e. without a hat contour, whereas the second consists of two phrases that are syntactically and semantically tied together. The rising nuclear tone brings about this connectedness because of its interpretation of incompleteness, openness etc. Although the difference between the two hat contours has some explanatory appeal, it is not always phonologically clear-cut. If both hat contours were always contrastive, we would expect that any sentence could be uttered in two different ways. Theoretically, a sentence like Montag ist Feiertag could be uttered contrastively as a hat contour 1 and as a hat contour 2. But this is not the case. How can we explain this lack of contrast without losing the distinction between the two hat contours? A possible explanation is provided by the notion of distinctivity. As we know from segmental phonology, the distinctiveness of a phoneme can be neutralized in some environments (like the contrast between /k/ and /g/ after /s/ as in Skelett). In the cases in question, the phrasing of the sentence and the form of the first accent are both relatively unimportant - neither adds meaning to the sentence, so there could be some kind of neutralization at work. However, there exist cases where the position of the accent is crucial for understanding. These are provided by pairs like modern/ modern. Goldbeck and Sendlmeier (1988) carried out experiments with pairs of words having the same segmental make-up but a different accentual pattern, like modern 'to decay1 /modern 'modern1, umfahren 'to run down'/ umfahren 'to drive round', 'übersetzen 'to cross the river'/ übersetzen 'to translate'. These words were spoken in a question with a rising contour and they were the last words of the sentence, so that they carried

152

the final rise. In trisyllabic words, there appeared a difference in length of the syllables: this difference is possibly associated with the segmental structure of the words: in modern, the /o/ is long and the /ε/ is short, whereas modern is pronounced with short /o/ and short /ε/. In both cases the pitch rise starts on the second syllable, but if the second syllable is unaccented, the rise begins immediately: the last syllable is the bearer of the tail tone only. If, on the other hand, the second syllable is accented, then the rise begins later on in the syllable10:

d run

mo

Fig. 17 From Goldbeck and Sendlmeierf 1988:309)

In my phonological analysis, both contours can be represented by L*H. The distinction is made by the association of the starred tone. In the first case, modern, the L* is associated with the first syllable and the unstarred tone, H, with the second syllable. In the second case, modern, both L* and Η are associated with the second stressed syllable: L* H

(51)

I I

modern

L*H

V

modern

From this experiment, we may learn that, at least in some cases, the place of a pitch change in the syllable, early or late, can be contrastive and very well perceived, viz. when the difference is crucial, because it contrasts two lexical items having different accentual patterns. However, in phrases where no contrast occurs, the tonal structure of utterances alone does not determine phrasing. We have to rely on other factors, such as timing.

10

For words with three and four syllables, where the accent is located on the penult, antepenult or preantepenult, no such discrepancy was found. The accented syllable was low. The rise was located on the syllables following the accented one. The observed difference in duration in the bysyllabic words did not exist in polysyllabic words.

153

4.4. Summary

Prenuclear accents can be monotonal (linked) or bitonal (partially linked or unlinked). From a phonological point of view it is possible to analyze the linked versions of them with the linking rule first formulated by Gussenhoven for English. In a sequence of accents, the choice of the tones contributes to the meaning of the text, and the way the accents are realized is in some cases the only method the speakers have at their disposal to disambiguate ambiguous sentences. This is more true in German than in English. This fact leads to question the universality of the no pre-planning hypothesis expressed by Liberman & Pierrehumbert (1984) for intonation languages. At least the form of an accent depends on the presence of a further accent in the same Intonation Phrase.

Chapter 5: Range, downstep, declination 5.1 Fundamental frequency as a gradient variable and as a correlate of phonological tones Two aspects must be distinguished that are expressed by the same phonetic parameter, i.e. the fundamental frequency (F0) range. First, the register used by a speaker to realize a tone or a tone sequence is a gradient variable. For example, a single high tone H* can be more or less high, depending on the expressiveness or emphasis added to an accent or to an utterance. The speaker always has the choice to give more or less prominence to a certain accent ('degree of local prominence'), depending on factors like degree of involvement etc. (Fig. 1 and 2, from Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984, Fig. 1 is repeated from Chapter 2). 300

150 ΟΓ PEAKS

150 100 -

ΟΓ

Fig I Anne from Liberman & Pierrehumbert (1984: 159)

Fig.2 illustrates the same kind of phenomenon with a rising tone. 225

200 N

175

X

zi 50 ο

ioo 75 IS IT F I V E '

Fig 2 Is it five? From Liberman & Pterrehumbert (1984:218)

156

In the same way, an IP can be uttered in a certain register, which can be wide or narrow (Overall pitch range'). Each IP can be realized within a register 1 covering more or fewer Hz.The register used in a particular utterance is (i) partly speaker-dependent - the total range of her or his voice can be large or small - and (ii) partly depends on the speaker's mood or other features of the context of utterance: if someone is asleep in the room where I speak, my register will be small. As to (i), compare the following expressions spoken by two different speakers, the first of which uses a larger register than the second. (Fig.Sa and b).

.000 t

0.0101

0.200 MC. / t i c

0.0000 ful_

0-500 Hz TIM Do*

«0.0096 *ν-Μ "i

Fig.3a Abemathy died 170-420 Hz (250 Hz)

0-500 Hl T IM Do»arn

Fig.3b Abemathy died 180-270 Hz (90 Hz)

According to Pierrehumbert and her co-authors (Pierrehumbert 1980, Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984, and Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986) these phenomena (degree of local prominence and overall pitch range) 1

The register is that part of a speaker's range used In a certain circumstance.

157

are mainly paralinguistic. (But see Ladd 1990a for a critical discussion of the use of the term paralinguistic.) This first aspect of tonal variation will not concern us here. Second, the tonal movements which are represented by abstract phonological tones are realized by Fo movements, as well. For example, the phonological description predicts that the falling movement of a nuclear accent is larger in a declarative than in a vocative (represented as H*L and H*LH respectively), and this difference does not vary freely2. This variation is triggered by truly linguistic factors like illocutionary acts: a declarative sentence requires a falling nucleus whereas an interrogative sentence allows a rising nucleus. Downstep belongs to this second category of tonal variation.

5.2. Downstepped accents As has been implicitly and explicitly stated at various places in this book, a falling accent is in some sense less marked than a rising one. As a matter of fact, it is nearly always possible to replace a hat pattern by a sequence of two falling accents3, as illustrated by the following examples taken from Chapter 4. Notice, however, that (liii and iv) are no longer disambiguated.

H*L H*L (1) i. l,p [^GESCHLAFEN \] [lphaf KEINER \υοη uns]] H*L

H*L

ii. [ IP [KLE7JV\] [lpsind ALLE \Mause]] H*L

H*L

iii. [1P I,pBE/DE\ Theaterst cke ] |,psind NICHT \ gespielt worden]] H*L

H*L

iv. [ IP [IPALLE\ Politiker]^ [hat so mancher NICHT\ verstanden]] Intonation descriptions that use four or more tones - like Pike (1945). Trager & Smith (1951) and many others - have the drawback that a given step is always ambiguous between the two usages of intonation just described. The only sentences with a seemingly obligatory hat pattern involve contrast and gapping: (i)

H»L H«L a. *Alain ist oft m de, aber TOM\ NIE\ H*L

H*L

H*L

H*L

b. *MAR£A\ ist nach BERLJN\ gefahren und ΜΑΚΉΛΛ nach HANNOVER\.

158 H*L

H*L

v. [IP [,pDer PR SIDENT^]

[lpwtrd GEW HLT \]]

Dn>chl : BSSJOC56.HSP

β.βββββ


8>

IB>PITCH

t

l n

s i n d

Tin·

a l l e

M X use

Fig.4 Downstepped falling accents instead of a hat pattern.

If the two accents have the same prominence, then they are realized as a sequence of downstepped accents, and each of them forms an Intermediate Phrase. This downstep is larger than the effect of declination 4 would lead us to expect. Downstep signals an equal prominence of accents: remember Pierrehumbert's example Manny came with Anna, where it was shown that in English an accent realized at the same height as a preceding one is perceived as more prominent. This observation carries over to German: if the second accent in (1) is equal to or higher than the first one, it is perceived as more prominent. Since 4

Declination has been described as the natural tendency of the fundamental frequency to decline gradually in the course of an utterance, independently of its tonal structure (Footnote 9 of Chapter 4 and Ladd 1984). In some recent literature, the notion of declination has been questioned. Pierrehumbert (& various co-authors) find that at least part of the phenomenon commonly called declination is better analyzed as final lowering. Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) venture the hypothesis that the amount of final lowering reflects the depth of embedding in the hierarchical discourse structure, suggesting that only truly final IPs have a great amount of it. Only isolated sentences (like the ones produced in laboratory experiments) seem to have reliable downtrends. In their recent study, Gussenhoven & Rietveld (1988) analyze the causes of declination; they find that declination in Dutch and English has the effect described by Pierrehumbert (1979): for two accent peaks to sound equal, the Fo of the second has to be lower than the first. They show that final lowering, paired with a time-dependent gradual decrease of the Fo. is responsible for this effect.

159

accent prominence is a relational notion (a syllable is prominent relative to its neighboring syllables), and since downstep is able to express this relation, downstep is an alternative to non-downstep. Compare (2): (2) i. Main clause and embedded clause [,P [jpMaria ist der MEINUNG] [ipdaß der Film GUT war]] 'Maria is of the opinion that the film was good.' ii. Cleft-sentences IIP dp Was ANNA gegessen hat ] [ipisi ein APFEL]] "What Anna ate was an apple.' iii . Extraposition IIP lipPeter hat sein Leben allen LEUTEN erzählt ] [ipdie er als seine FREUNDE betrachtet]] 'Peter told his life story to all the people who he thinks of as friends.1 iv. Topicalization [,P [,pAm MEISTEN gegessen ] [,phai RUDI}] 'Rudi ate the most.1 In all the constructions mentioned here, as well as in other ones, the second accent can be downstepped or not. If it is downstepped, the whole sentence is understood as focussed (Fig.Sa). If, on the other hand, the second accent is not downstepped, i.e. if it is at the same level as the first accent, then the first part of the sentence is understood as being already given and part of the background (Fig.Sb). Figs.Sa and b are illustrations of the answers in (3) and (4): (3) (Wie war Toms Kindergeburtstag?) 'How was Tom's birthday party?1 Es war schön, es gab Spiele und viele Kuchen, und, wie immer, am meisten gegessen hat Rudi. 'It was nice, there were games and many cakes, and, as usual, Rudi ate the most.' (4) (Haben viele Kinder gleich viel gegessen?) 'Did many children eat the same amount?1

160

Nein, am meisten gegessen hat Rudi, und am wenigsten J rgen. 'No, Rudi ate the most, and J rgen the least.' SYSTEM ηητη un.u L I N K I N G A>ehl : BASJOC78.MSP

snou

sricnii

ηΝηι.γ«:

κοι τ

π·η

Tin«

β.θβθββ
PITCH

Tin·

Flg.Sa Contour of the sentence Am meisten gegessen hat Rudi (with downstep, (3)). ϋΛτη υ ι EU L I N K I M G IW>chl >chl : BASJOC71.NSF

-331

i

1

1

snow

si't:nn

EDIT

HO

nncHos

LOG

nnc

i

β.βββββ


Tin· < » » c >

Flg.Sb Contour of the sentence Am meisten gegessen hat Rudi (without downstep, (4)).

161

5.3. The representation of downstep There is a current debate about what is the best representation of downstep and pitch range in English (Pierrehumbert 1980, Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986, Ladd 1983, 1986, 1990). Though I do not want to take a stand in this debate, I will briefly present the main points of disagreement between Pierrehumbert's and Ladd's largely theorydependent points of view. The first attempt to represent downstep in English in an autosegmental framework was made by Pierrehumbert (1980). She was inspired by the Africanist representation of tonal downstep for tone languages. In Igbo5, to take a well-known African tone language, two high tones separated by a low tone exhibit downstep. i.e. the second high tone is lower than the first one. The sentence (5) illustrates this:

(5)

Tom c ro ewu H L H

Tom wants a goat.'

When specified, two high tones in a sequence can exhibit downstep too, as ύ)υυέ in the following example:

(6)

Tom hum igwe H L H H

Tom saw the sky.'

Pierrehumbert suggests that downstep in English is essentially the same phenomenon and analyzes it as the result of a context-sensitive rule lowering the target of a high tone after another H in certain configurations; more precisely, a tone is downstepped if it is preceded by a HLH sequence obligatorily including a bitonal pitch accent (H+L H or H L+H). Pierrehumbert's phonetically orientated approach predicts that downstep applies whenever its structural description is met (Fig.6).

My source is Welmers & Welmers (1968).

162

ι-β see

ΙΟ MC

WO

I

ο

*

LO

lOMC

MC

Fig.6 Contexts of downstep according to Pierrehumbert (1980) Four contours of the sentence There are many intermediate levels. (From Pierrehumbert 1980 Figs 4.1-4.4.)

In her paper with Mary Beckman (1986), each bitonal tone licences downstep. Besides the contexts of Fig.6, downstep6 also takes place in a vocative (Fig.7a), a hat pattern (Fig.7b) and a list (Fig.7c). 4OO

H»+L

300 L« ZOO

Mori-

40O

300

L*

200 r«ol-

6

don't

b«li«ve

Mori-

Following Poser (1984). Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) use the term 'catathesis'.

163 225 - C 200 175

blueberries 150

boybtrries

125

raspberries

100

m u l b e r r i e s and 75

brombleberriei

Fig.7 Context of downstep according to Beckman & Plerrehumbert (1986).

Beckman & Pierrehumbert consider the Intermediate Phrase to be the domain of application for downstep. This point of view implies that those cases in which Intermediate Phrases are downstepped relative to each other are not a consequence of downstep. Beckman & Pierrehumbert follow Brown et al. (1980) in saying "that the pitch range is raised when initiating a new topic, and lowered when concluding one" (Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986:300). An example of pitch range lowering is given in Fig.8, taken from Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986), and repeated from Chapter 2. In this utterance, 'a round-windowed', 'sun-illuminated' and 'room' each form their own Intermediate Phrase. As is clearly observable each of them has its accent on a lower level than the preceding one. Beckman & Pierrehumbert do not interpret this downstep as phonologically driven. 300

200

round-

windowed

sun- i l l u m i n a t e d

Fig.8 From Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986:291) Ά round-windowed, sun-illuminated room1

Let's take a look at the environments of downstep in German. Besides those cited in (1) and (2), those listed by Beckman & Pierrehumbert (Fig.7) also appear in German. Compare the following list contours:

164 Dnrn

υ ι EU

ηκ

[ . I N K IMC;

ΠΗΛΙΝΕ

EDIT

ii'n

nnutus

Β.ββΜΜΚ

•B>PIICH

i.o

MM)

ZZV=x\ f^

•^^/~

Maria,—Benno und Moody sind Philosophen.

Fig.Sa Maria. Benno und Moody sind Philosophen. 'Maria, Benno and Moody are philosophers.' 3V TEM

DflTO

UIEU

LINKING

UA>chl : BASSM7.NSF

SHOU

SI'EflK θ.βθβββ
ehl : DISS35.HSP

TIM

A

-13

a.eeme
PITCH

Maria

ihrer Wohnung.

wohnt allein TIM