Cypriot Greek Nuclear Pitch Accents : Ta pirinika tonika ipsi tis kypriakis ellinikis (in Greek)

• This study examines the Cypriot Greek nuclear pitch accents. Specifically, it examines the tonal representation of narrow information focus, broad focus, contrastive focus, and contrastive topic. For this purpose, an experiment has been designed in which four distinct contexts have been devised in order to elicit utterances with different information structure categories. The experiment examined whether the information structure categories are associated with categorically distinct nuclear pitch accents. The results showed no effect of the information structure categories on the realization of the nuclear pitch accents. However, secondary cues from segmental duration distinguish narrow foci from broad focus. These results, which underline a division of labor between phonological structure and meaning interpretation, are difficult to accommodate in models that directly associate meaning to tonal categories.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

prosody

information structure

Cypriot Greek

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)