LINGUISTICS SEMINAR: Frank Kügler (Frankfurt)- "On the prosodic expression of focus in Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian complex noun phrases

This comparative study investigates the prosodic marking of focus in complex noun phrases (NPs) in Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian. In a production study, comparable sentences across the languages were constructed containing a sentence-initial target subject NP (e.g., ‘cheerful famous knights’). Sentences were embedded into contexts that elicited focus either on the first adjective (A1), on the second one (A2), or on the noun (N). 20 speakers per language read aloud ten different target sentences across the three different contexts (20 x 10 x 3 = 600 sentences per language). For each word in the NP (A1, A2, N), f0-max and f0-slopes were fitted with Linear Mixed Models with focus condition as predictor, and by-participant random intercepts. Results show similarities in the phrasal prosody of the three languages. For all focus conditions, the highest f0 peak occurred on the NP-initial word (except in A2 in Hungarian). After the initial f0-peak, every word in the NP had a lowered f0. Focus on A2 or N raised f0 compared to the lowered post-focal f0 in A1 focus but did not reach the height of an initial f0-peak. Concerning f0-slopes, the focused word showed significantly steeper slopes than in identical non-focused words in all three languages. Importantly, this phrase-prosodic pattern differs from NP-internal focus marking in Germanic (focal f0-raising and deaccenting post-focal words), and Romance languages (accentuation of all words within an NP). The results will be discussed in light of prosodic typology.

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