On Focus, Prosody, and Word Order in Argentinean Spanish. A Minimalist OT Account

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Abstract
During the last decade, several proposals have been made for modeling focus-induced word order variation in Spanish, both in derivational and in optimality-theoretical frameworks. Furthermore, empirical studies have been carried out in order to capture the prosodic correlates of focus marking, most of them couched in the Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) model of intonational phonology. Interestingly, recent syntactic and prosodic studies rely on different assumptions regarding the acceptability of a structure in a given context: While most phonologists assume that a narrowly focused XP can be prosodically marked in situ ([F S]VO, SV[F dOiO), most syntacticians predict movement of the presupposed material to a higher position, yielding prosodically unmarked structures with final nuclear stress (VO[F S], SViO[F dO]). Formal approaches that integrate pragmatically motivated features correctly predict instances of focus-induced word order, but run into problems when a given focus-background articulation corresponds to different possible output forms, in other words when optionality is at play. Classical Optimality Theory (OT) is no exception in this respect, given that its fixed constraint hierarchy allows for only one favored candidate. In this paper, I concentrate on focus marking in two varieties of Argentinean Spanish, which differ from other Spanish varieties in terms of their overall prosodic shape and the speakers’ preferences for certain syntactic structures. I argue that different syntactic and phonological strategies of focus marking can be accounted for by combining Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) target/probe approach with the model of Stochastic OT (Boersma/Hayes 2001). My proposal is supported by empirical data stemming from recordings made with 50 speakers from Buenos Aires and Neuquén.
Autoren
Funding acknowledgements
  • German Research Foundation: 5483483
  • The intonation of Spanish in Argentina (H09, Collaborative Research Center 538 “Multilingualism”)
ISSN
1678-8931
Ausgabe der Veröffentlichung
4
Zeitschrift
Revista Virtual de Estudos da Linguagem - ReVEL
Sprache
English
Online publication date
2010
Paginierung
183 - 222, 39
Herausgeber
Gabriel de Ávila Othero
Herausgeber URL
http://www.revel.inf.br/files/artigos/revel_special_4_on_focus_prosody_and_word_order.pdf
Datum der Datenerfassung
2022
Titel
On Focus, Prosody, and Word Order in Argentinean Spanish. A Minimalist OT Account
Sub types
  • Article

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