Syntax-prosody mapping, topic-comment structure and stress-focus correspondence in Hungarian
Balâzs Surányi, Shinichiro Ishihara, Fabian Schubö · 2012
This paper investigates the basic prosodic structure of Hungarian and its inter-action with information structure, in particular the following two aspects: the prosodic realization of the topic-comment partition, and the resolution of conflicts that may potentially arise between the basic algorithms of the syntax-prosody mapping on the one hand, and the prosodic requirement of the focus constituent to contain nuclear stress (stress-focus correspondence) on the other . We report the results of a production experiment in which we examined sen-tences where the semantic focus constituent is not in the position of the de-fault nuclear stress and is unable to be placed there by a syntactic transforma-tion . Regarding the topic-comment partition, our data reveals that there is a systematic prosodic difference between the two parts of a sentence in terms of pitch accent type: H*L is the default accent within the comment, while topic phrases are realized with a variety of pitch accents, but not with H*L . With re-spect to the conflict between the syntax-prosody mapping and the stress-focus correspondence, we found three resolution strategies: (i) adjusting the location of the topic-comment partition by avoiding the (default) comment accent H*L in pre-focal positions; (ii) extending the F0-register of the narrowly focused element while keeping the default prosodic phrasing intact; and (iii) making no changes (in compliance to the requirement of stress-focus correspondence) . Finally, we discuss several possible theoretical analyses that may derive these effects .