Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

68 Sections
The goal of this study is to present a functional and phonological analysis of the prosody of
the main peripheral constructions in English, using the conceptual framework of information
structure theory and the analytical tools of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993;
McCarthy and Prince 1993; Kager 1999; McCarthy 2002), and citing as evidence English
examples. The study asks four questions. First, is there any variation in the phrasing of the
constructions under study? If so, second, is it merely phonetic? Or, third, is it phonological
(hence compromising the claim of universality)? Fourth, how can it be accounted for?
We present a phonetic and phonological description of the intonation of the main types of
peripheral constructions (left- and right-detached constructions, non-restrictive relatives,
parentheses, etc.) which is based on spoken corpora English data (Freiburg Corpus of English
Dialects, FRED), and on empirical data that was collected as part of the first author’s doctoral
dissertation (Astruc 2005). Results show significant variation in the phrasing of the
constructions under study. We argue that such variation is phonetic in nature, not
phonological. We provide arguments for analysing these constructions as intermediate
phrases, the constituent in the prosodic hierarchy (Nespor and Vogel, Selkirk 1986,
Truckenbrodt 1995) ranked just below the Intonational Phrase. The proposed analysis
successfully accounts for the observed patterns of phonetic variability by proposing a set of
phrasing constraints ranked with faithfulness constraints, and, crucially, with effortminimizing
constraints that promote rephrasing or deaccenting according to speech rate and
style. We discuss this analysis in relation to current theories of information structure. After
Vallduví, we assume a model of information structure which is composed of a set of
categories that consists of a limited number of scalar categories: ‘tail’, ‘link’, and ‘focus’
(Vallduví 1990, 1994). In this study, we provide evidence for such a three-way partition of
information structure, which is both consistent with Vallduví’s (1990, 1994) ‘tail’, ‘link’, and
‘focus’, and with Ward and Birner’s (2004) ‘evoked’, ‘unused’, and ‘brand-new’, and which
effectively captures the functional asymmetry between right- and left-peripheral
constructions. We further argue that these are marked in terms of information structure and
intonation.Peripheral constructions are intonationally marked, but this marking is not
exclusively achieved by means of separate phonological phrasing. It can also be achieved by
means of tonal phonological mechanisms, such as deaccenting, tonal subordination, or by a
combination of phrasing and tonal mechanisms. Thus, we propose, that independent
phonological phrasing and/or subordinated intonation are possible universal ways of
signalling information structural markedness.
High pitch as an universal marking of interrogation:
evidence from Catalan
Astruc, Lluïsa
The Open University
mla28@cam.ac.uk
In most languages statements end in a low pitch and questions end in a high pitch. High pitch is
thus connected to the expression of uncertainty and interrogation (Liberman 1978, Bolinger 1978,
Ohala 1983, Cruttenden 1997, Gussenhoven 2004). High-pitched question tunes are regarded as
grammaticalisations grounded in the ‘frequency code’ (Ohala 1983). In this frequency code, low
pitch indicates physical power (since the bigger the larynx is, the more lower-pitched the animal
sounds), while high pitch would indicate the opposite. The grammaticalisation of the frequency
code means that linguistic assertion is expressed by low pitch, while uncertainty and interrogation
are expressed by high pitch. Studies in Spanish (Prieto 2004, Rourke 2005), Dutch (Haan 2002),
and Estonian (Asu 2003) offer support for this view.