Prosodic Characteristics of Sentences with Communicatively Marked and Communicatively Unmarked Alignment Cover Image
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Прозодични характеристики на изречения с комуникативно маркиран и комуникативно немаркиран словоред
Prosodic Characteristics of Sentences with Communicatively Marked and Communicatively Unmarked Alignment

Author(s): Bistra Andreeva, Snezhina Dimitrova
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Education, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Eastern Slavic Languages, Vocational Education, Adult Education, Philology, Inclusive Education / Inclusion, Distance learning / e-learning, Pedagogy
Published by: Национално издателство за образование и наука „Аз-буки“
Keywords: prosody; intonation; information structure; word order; communicatively marked/unmarked alignment

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents the results from a study of the interaction between intonation and information structure in SVO and OVS sentences with communicatively (un)marked alignment of information structure elements. We analyzed the prosodic features of pre-nuclear and nuclear pitch accents. The information structure elements were characterized using Steedman’s (2000) model which classifies sentence constituents as belonging to one of the following categories: theme-background, theme-focus, rheme-background and rheme-focus. Our study found that unmarked and marked alignment has no effect on the pitch range of the rheme-focus. In cases of communicatively unmarked alignment, the pitch range of the theme-background (and rheme-background) group in OVS sentences is wider than in SVO sentences. Word order has no effect on the duration of the accented syllable. Topicalized constituents belonging to the theme-background in OVS sentences with unmarked alignment form separate intermediate phrases. In cases of marked alignment, the rheme-focus ends with a phrase accent and sometimes a pause. The rheme-background and rheme-focus always take a pitch accent, whereas the theme-background is marked by a pitch accent only in cases of communicatively unmarked alignment. The theme-background is deaccented when the sentence is communicatively marked.

  • Issue Year: 63/2021
  • Issue No: 6
  • Page Range: 595 - 608
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Bulgarian