English Listeners' Knowledge of the Broad versus Narrow Focus Contrast
نویسنده
چکیده
The present study examined English listeners‟ knowledge of how the size of the focus constituent is expressed prosodically. Thirty English-speaking listeners participated in a prominence-rating experiment in which they heard the same production of a simple SVO answer sentence in different focus (i.e., different question) contexts. It was found that when the object was narrowly focused, it was heard as more prominent (and the preceding verb as less prominent) than when that same object was part of broader VP or Sentence foci. We interpret the findings as reflecting listeners‟ knowledge of speakers‟ productions of the information structure contrast.
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