Prosodic Markings of Complex NP Focus, Syntax, and the Pre-/Post-focus String

The prosodic realization of focus can vary depending on various factors such as type of focus (e.g., information focus, corrective focus), morphosyntax (whether or not a language has a morpho-syntactic marker of focus), and intonational phonology of language, and thus is language-specific. On one hand, head-prominence languages such as English, German, and Greek, mark prominence through the use of pitch accent (i.e., salient pitch movement on the stressed syllable), and the focused word receives a nuclear pitch accent, “deaccenting” the following word(s). On the other hand, edge prominencelanguages such as Korean and Japanese mark prominence by manipulating the phrasing (i.e., grouping) of words, Lastly, languages such as Bengali and French, considered both headand edge-prominence languages, prominence is marked by both pitch accent and phrasing (Jun 2005). Prosodic realizations of focus also differ by domain (i.e., whether the focus domain is a single word or a phrase) and the syntactic type of constituent (i.e., whether it’s an NP or VP). In the case of VP focus in English, e.g., (1c), studies have shown that nuclear pitch accent is given on the VP-final argument, thus similar to the case with the final argument having narrow focus (Gussenhoven 1983; Birch & Clifton 1995; Welby 2003), though more recent studies have revealed some differences in the pitch accent types and the realization of pre-nuclear pitch accent (Baumann, Becker, Grice, & Mücke 2008; Breen, Fedorenko, Wagner, & Gibson submitted; Jun in progress). In the case of VP focus in Korean, Jun, Kim, Lee, & Kim (2006) and Jun & Kim (2007) have shown that the VP-initial argument receives the strongest prominence, while all following lexical items, sometimes even the verb, still receive prominence. That is, no dephrasing happens after the initial argument. This differs from the case where the VP-initial argument receives narrow focus. In that case, a strong phrase boundary is inserted at the beginning of the focused argument, and all items after the focused argument are either dephrased (i.e., phrase boundaries are deleted) or realized in substantially reduced pitch range. Prosodic realizations of NP focus differ from VP focus and also vary across languages. In Neapolitan Italian declaratives, each word in a focused NP is marked by a rising (L+H*) nuclear pitch