Speaker: Shin Ishihara
Title: Japanese Focus Prosody Revisited: Freeing Focus from Prosodic Phrasing
Time: Thurs 5/5, 11am-12pm, 32-D461 ***NOTE SPECIAL DATE, TIME, AND LOCATION
This talk revisits empirical and theoretical problems of focus prosody
in Japanese, and proposes a new analysis. Contrary to the widely
accepted assumption that focus directly or indirectly modifies
prosodic phrasing, various studies have shown that prosodic boundaries
remain unchanged when a focus is added to a sentence. It is proposed
that phonetic effects of focus (F0-rise on the focused word, and
reduction in the post-focal areas) result from manipulations of
metrical prominences (addition of focal prominence on the focused word
and deletion of head prominences in the post-focal area) that have no
effect on prosodic boundaries. In order to allow prominence
manipulation while keeping prosodic phrasing intact, two modifications
are made to one of the widely accepted Optimality-Theoretic analyses
of focus prosody. First, the syntax-prosody alignment constraint will
be ranked higher, which allows it to dictate the location of prosodic
boundaries. Second, metrical culminativity (one metrical prominence
per prosodic constituent) is treated as a violable constraint, and it
is proposed that this constraint is low-ranked in Japanese. As a
result, Japanese allows multi-headed phrases (when focus adds a
prominence), as well as headless prosodic phrases (when focus deletes
post-focal prominences).