Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E7, Canada.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2021 Mar;149(3):1390. doi: 10.1121/10.0003594.
Two experiments quantitatively investigated the interaction of prosody and syntax in marking focus in English. A production study with 28 participants (analyzing 919 utterances) found that the acoustic marking of subject focus vs broad focus, induced through a preceding context question, was generally the same in clefts as in sentences with unmarked syntax. Thus, results suggested that prosody is independent from syntax rather than showing a trade-off (weaker prosodic marking for clefts). Focus was marked with f0 range, f0 maxima, f0 minima, duration, and intensity. Maxima of focused subjects were not significantly higher, but they were earlier than in broad focus. In a perception experiment, 230 participants rated the suitability of 24 auditorily presented stimuli as answers to preceding context questions inducing subject focus or broad focus. Clefts and sentences prosodically marking the subject as focused were rated higher in subject focus than in broad focus contexts. Syntax and prosody did not interact, again suggesting the absence of a trade-off. Thus, both studies suggest an additive use of syntax and prosody: Prosodic focus marking was equally extensive and effective in the presence of syntactic focus marking as without.
两项实验定量研究了韵律和句法在英语重音标记中的相互作用。一项由 28 名参与者参与的产出研究（分析了 919 个话语）发现，通过前置语境问题诱导的主语重音与广义重音的声学标记，在分裂句和无标记句法的句子中基本相同。因此，结果表明韵律与句法是独立的，而不是权衡取舍的关系（分裂句的韵律标记较弱）。重音通过 f0 范围、f0 最大值、f0 最小值、时长和强度来标记。焦点主语的最大值并不显著更高，但比广义重音更早出现。在一项感知实验中，230 名参与者对 24 个听觉呈现的刺激进行了评分，这些刺激作为对前置语境问题的回答，诱导出主语重音或广义重音。在主语重音语境中，在句法上标记主语为焦点的分裂句和句子比在广义重音语境中被评为更高的焦点。句法和韵律没有相互作用，再次表明不存在权衡取舍。因此，两项研究都表明句法和韵律是叠加使用的：在有句法焦点标记的情况下，韵律焦点标记同样广泛和有效。
