Multiple contrastive accents in German production: Syntactic and rhythmic factors

The prosody of utterances containing one focused constituent is well investigated in German. However, little is known about the realisation of multiple contrastive accents in double-focus contexts. The present study addresses syntactic and rhythmic factors affecting the occurrence of multiple contrastive accents. In particular, we compare the prosodic marking of double-focused argument-predicate constructions and argument-argument constructions and their rhythmic environment, predicting that a pitch accent might be omitted if its production were lead to a pitch accent clash (i.e. two accented syllables directly following each other). The present results show that in focused contexts, predicates are less accentable than arguments and that pitch accent clashes are generally avoided. Both factors, syntactic status and rhythm contraints, should be taken into account in models of focus-to-accent mapping.