A constraint-based analysis of the intonational realization of focus in Northern Bizkaian Basque

This paper analyzes patterns of prosodic prominence and intonational phrasing of narrowly focused words in a variety of Northern Bizkaian Basque. One type of speaker can only single out words intonationally if they are accented and constitute APs by themselves, while the other type can have prominence on any word which is accented, regardless of whether it constitutes an AP by itself. Lexically unaccented words which fail to get a derived pitch accent by occurring immediately before the verb cannot be singled out, and are pronounced in the same AP with the following word. These restrictions are analyzed in the framework of Optimality Theory, and are shown to derive from the interplay of five constraints. A constraint penalizing the insertion of accents dominates the constraint that demands that contrastively focalized words are intonationally singled out. This accounts for the impossibility of highlighting a lexically unaccented word unless it gets a derived accent. The difference between the two types of speakers is explained as a difference in the relative ranking of two other constraints. One of these enforces the alignment of the tonal sequence %L Hwith the left edge of an AP, and of a pitch accent with the right edge of an AP. The other requires the presence of an ip-boundary at the left edge of the focused word. More restrictive speakers rank the former higher than the latter, and less restrictive speakers have the opposite ranking.