An OT Analysis of Informational Focus in Mandarin Chinese

This paper provides an OT account for the realization of informational focus in Mandarin Chinese. The analysis is based on the conclusion drawn in my dissertation (Li 2009) that informational focus in Mandarin is realized in-situ with prosodic prominence (sentential stress), but no part is in particular prosodically more prominent if the entire sentence is the focus or when the sentence-final element is the focus. I treat this as a case of ‘do something except when...’, more specifically, ‘stress the focused element except in the sentence-final position’ in my analysis. Enlightened by Samek-Lodovici (2005), I account for the patterns in Mandarin by proposing three types of constraints: syntactic constraints, *FinalStress and Stress-Focus and ranking SF lower than the other two. I also Compare Mandarin with Italian and English and show that Mandarin is just a specific case in the language typology of the realization of informational focus through the interaction of various grammar components.