Adaptation of focus to lexical tone and phrasing in Kammu

Recently it has been proposed to base intonational typology on the way languages convey focus (pragmatic prominence). Generally, languages can enhance, add or delete phrase boundary tones (phrase languages) or add an extra pitch accent (intonation languages) to mark focus. Tone languages are somewhat problematic for this typology as it is difficult to make direct observations on their sentence intonation. Generally, tone languages are supposed to have a suppressed use of intonation on the sentence level. As a consequence, tone languages are usually described as a separate prosodic type. We investigate Kammu, an Austroasiatic language spoken mainly in Laos. Kammu has two main dialects, one with lexical tones and one without tones; other phonological differences are minimal. In our previous studies we concentrated on elicited and controlled speech to explore the role of F0 in focusing and phrasing. We concluded that both dialects belong to the phrase language type. In the present study we use spontaneous material and investigate both F0 and duration for phrasing and focusing. We show that both F0 and duration are used for focusing in the two dialects. However, the prosodic realization of focus is restricted to the rightmost edge of the prosodic phrase, which coincides with the phrase boundary. The main conclusion is that the prevalence for edge marking influences the realization of focus, in accordance with prosodic typology. Further, the occurrence of lexical tones can still be combined with the phrasing pattern, and the tonal dialect shows the same strategies for focusing and phrasing as a phrase language.