Prosodic (non-)realisation of broad, narrow and contrastive focus in Hungarian: a production and a perception study

In languages with variable focus positions, prominent elements tend to be emphasised by prosodic cues (e.g. English). If a language prefers a given prosodic pattern, i.e. sentence-final nuclear accents, like Spanish, the prosodic realisation of broad focus might not differ from that of narrow and contrastive focus. The relevance of prosodic focus marking was tested in Hungarian were focus typically appears in front of the finite verb. Prosodic cues such as f0 maximum, f0 peak alignment, segment duration and post-verbal deaccentuation were tested in an experiment with read question and answer sequences. While narrow and contrastive focus triggered post-verbal deaccentuation, none of the gradual measures distinguished focus types consistently from each other. A subsequent perception experiment was conducted in which the same sentences without postverbal units were to be judged for their naturalness. F0 maximum, f0 peak alignment and accent duration were manipulated. Naturalness scores revealed a sequence narrow> contrastive> broad focus, i.e. a preference for narrow focus contexts compared to contrastive and broad focus ones, while the manipulated prosodic parameters had no effect on the scores. It is concluded that prosodic focus marking in Hungarian is optional and pragmatic rather than grammatical and syntax-related.