Contrast and accent in Dutch and Romanian Marc Swerts Communication & Cognition Tilburg University.
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Transcript of Contrast and accent in Dutch and Romanian Marc Swerts Communication & Cognition Tilburg University.
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Contrast and accent in Dutch and Romanian
Marc Swerts
Communication & CognitionTilburg University
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OverviewContrast and accent
Experimental paradigm
Results for Dutch and Romanian
Discussion and conclusion
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Contrast and accentContrast refers to cases where one or more individual items are singled out from a larger (but limited) set of alternatives (Bolinger 1986; Cruttenden 1986; Chafe 1974, 1976)
Contrast can be signalled by pitch accents, especially when they occur in a non-default position (narrow focus accents)
Example (from Chafe 1974): RONALD made the hamburgers.
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Contrast is controversialDebate about definition of contrastive accents:Contrastive accents and correctionsContrastive accents and newness accents (limited set of alternatives)
Debate about prosodic properties of contrastive accents:Do contrastive accents have a separate shape?Are contrastive accents more prominent than newness accents?
Some of the opposing views can be reconciled (Krahmer and Swerts 2001)
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Today: other factorsForward and backward-looking contrastive relations
Distance between contrasting elements
Syntactic factors (inside NP)
Language differences
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Problem 1: forward versus backwardA contrast relation can hold with a preceding or with following item
Example:First he wanted the BLUE ball, and then he wanted to RED ball
Hypothesis: backward-looking relations have a stronger impact on accent distribution than forward-looking relations (compare: anaphoric versus cataphoric)
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Problem 2: effect of distanceContasting items can be close to each other or not
Example:1. The red ball touches the BLUE ball2. The triangle touches the red ball. Then it touches the BLUE ball.
Hypothesis:Contrastive relations between items that are close to each other have a stronger impact on accent distribution than distant ones.
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Problem 3: lexico-syntactic factorsContrasts can occur on syntactically different lexical items (e.g. adjective versus noun)
Examples:He saw the RED ballHe saw the red BALL
Hypothesis:Contrasts on adjective have a stronger impact on accent distribution than contrasts on noun (nuclear accents can be preceded but not followed by other accents)
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Problem 4: language differencesLanguages can differ in the extent to which they use accent distribution to signal contrast relations
Example:Dutch: ZWARTE driehoek (normal)Italian: TRIANGOLO nero (marked)
Hypothesis:Impact of contrast on accent distribution is stronger in Germanic languages than in Romance languages
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Current studyAnalysis of relation between accents and contrast in Dutch and Romanian
Three questions:Forward- versus backwardlooking relationsRelations within and across sentence boundaries (distance)Syntactic function of a word
Use of experimental paradigm to elicit accent patterns: speakers are asked to describe different scenes of moving geometrical figures which they watch on a computer screen
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DataParadigm used to elicit utterances from 10 Dutch and 10 Romanian speakers: utterances with SVO order in both languagesNPs were adj-noun in Dutch, noun-adj in Romanian
Speakers had to describe 36 scenes with 3 consecutive utterances; third sentence contained a target NP Dutch: blauw vierkant; gele driehoekRomanian: patratul albastru; triunghiul galben
All utterances labeled in terms of accent distribution by 2 independent annotators (few disagreements solved by consensus)
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DUTCH RESULTS
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Syntactic function: noun or adjectiveWithin sentence
Contrast on adjective Contrast on noun
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Syntactic function: noun or adjective (2)Across sentence boundaries
Contrast on adjective Contrast on noun
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Forward- backwardForward (subject)
Contrast on adjective Contrast on noun
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Forward- backward (2)Backward (object)
Contrast on adjective Contrast on noun
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Within/across sentenceContrast on adj within sentence Contrast on adj across sentenceContrast on noun across sentence Contrast on noun within sentence
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ROMANIAN RESULTS
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No effect of contrast at allIrrespective of discourse context: very consistent preference to put a single accent on adjective (second word in Romanian NP).
This effect is especially true when the NP occurs in object position; also, impressionistically the accent in utterance-final position often appears to be more prominent
Relatively many cases of completely deaccented NPs (both adjective and noun) when NP occurs in subject position (rarely happened in Dutch)
Example: Triunghiul albastru atinge patratul albastru
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Conclusion: DutchAccent distribution is highly dependent on contrast relations between items
But in a complex way:
Backward-looking relations are stronger than forward-looking ones
Contrasts within sentences are stronger than across sentence boundaries
Contrasts on adjectives have stronger impact than contrasts on nouns
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Conclusion: RomanianAccent distribution is not dependent at all on contrast relations
It seems to serve a demarcative function, i.e. to signal the right edge of a phrase
This is especially true when the NP appears in utterance-final position.