Frazier Lyn, Clifton Charles, Carlson Katy
Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 01003, USA.
Lang Speech. 2007;50(Pt 1):1-21. doi: 10.1177/00238309070500010101.
In spoken English, pitch accents can convey the focus associated with new or contrasted constituents. Two listening experiments were conducted to determine whether accenting a subject makes its predicate a more tempting antecedent for an elided verb phrase, presumably because the accent helps focus the subject of the antecedent clause, increasing its likelihood of contrasting with the subject of the elided clause. The results of Experiment 1 supported the predictions of this "Contrasted Remnant hypothesis" but in principle could also be caused by listeners avoiding antecedents containing a focused (F-marked) constituent. Experiment 2 disconfirmed the hypothesis that listeners avoid antecedents containing a focused constituent, although pitch accents within a potential antecedent VP affected ellipsis resolution.
在英语口语中，音高重音可以传达与新成分或对比成分相关的焦点。进行了两项听力实验，以确定对主语进行重音标注是否会使其谓语成为省略动词短语更具吸引力的先行词，大概是因为重音有助于聚焦先行子句的主语，增加其与省略子句主语形成对比的可能性。实验1的结果支持了这种“对比残余假设”的预测，但原则上也可能是由于听众避免使用包含焦点（F标记）成分的先行词。实验2否定了听众避免使用包含焦点成分的先行词这一假设，尽管潜在先行动词短语中的音高重音会影响省略解析。
