Prosodic correlates of contrastive and non-contrastive themes in German
نویسندگان
چکیده
Semantic theories on focus and information structure assume that there are different accent types for thematic (backwardlooking, known) and rhematic (forward-looking, new) information in languages as English and German. According to Steedman [1], thematic material may only be intonationally marked (= bear a pitch accent), if it “contrasts with a different established or accommodatable” theme [p. 656]. We shall show that intonational marking of themes in German seems rather gradual. Themes in contrastive contexts have a significantly longer stressed vowel, a higher and longer rise which results in a higher and more delayed peak than non-contrastive themes. Moreover, speakers can use different strategies to signal the contrast. Data were elicited by reading short paragraphs with a contrastive and non-contrastive pre-context. The use of many filler texts distracted subjects’ attention from the contrast so that the data may be regarded as highly natural. Implementing these prosodic features in speech synthesis systems might help to avoid unnatural exaggerated prosodic realisations.
منابع مشابه
Answers to the Perception of Thematic Contrast and Questions regarding the Perception of Thematic “Non-Contrast”
In a previous production study [1] we explored the prosodic marking of thematic material in contrastive and non-contrastive contexts in German. While both conditions resulted in a prenuclear rise, we found that themes in contrastive context exhibited a significantly longer stressed vowel, together with a higher and later peak. Interestingly, speakers varied as to whether they used peak alignmen...
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