Narrow focus realization in the monosyllabic lexical pitch contrast in East Norwegian

The Trøndersk dialect of East Norwegian is rather unusual typologically in that it exhibits a tonal contrast (unmarked vs. circumflex) on monosyllabic words [7, 1, 20]. The goal of the current study was to examine this contrast and how it is impacted by sentential focus. Ten speakers of the Trøndersk dialect were recorded reading target monosyllabic words with these accents embedded in sentences with broad and narrow focus. In broad focus, words with the unmarked accent have an L tone and words with the circumflex accent have a HL contour with a higher F0 maximum and vowel onset than the unmarked contour. In narrow focus, both accents have a wider pitch range and later low tone alignment. Phonologically long vowels were lengthened under narrow focus. This study adds to the literature on the realization of focus in pitch accent languages, and the interaction between prosodically marked focus and lexical accents.