How focus particles and accents affect attachment

This project shows that focus and information structure, as indicated by the particle “only” pitch accents, influence syntactic attachment, in contrast to well-known effects of prosodic boundaries on attachment. One written questionnaire, one completion study, several auditory questionnaires show position strongly affects attachment preferences ambiguous sentences, while contrastive accents have smaller effects. The two types marking do not interact but independently impact These results support a modified version Focus Attraction Hypothesis, with material drawn attach most important sentence. research structure can affect sentence well discourse coherence.