Prosodic and Segmental Cues to the Perception of Grammatical Number in Two Limburgian Dialects of Dutch

This paper investigates the perception of grammatical number in two Limburgian dialects of Dutch, Roermond and Weert, as a function of focus and intonational context. In these dialects, number can be marked segmentally or prosodically. The Roermond dialect, but not the Weert dialect, appears to neutralize the prosodic distinction outside the focus constituent in IP-internal syllables. We explain this difference between the dialects on the basis of the specific prosodic marking used, duration in the Weert dialect and F0 in the Roermond dialect.