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5. Prosody of Contrastive Focus in Two Varieties of Assamese


 
Dublin Core PKP Metadata Items Metadata for this Document
 
1. Title Title of document 5. Prosody of Contrastive Focus in Two Varieties of Assamese - Prosodic Variation (with)in Languages
 
2. Creator Author's name, affiliation, country Asim Twaha; Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati;
 
2. Creator Author's name, affiliation, country Shakuntala Mahanta; Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati;
 
3. Subject Discipline(s) Linguistics
 
4. Subject Keyword(s) prosodic variation; intonation; prosodic phrasing; Assamese; prosodic grammar; pitch accent
 
5. Subject Subject classification Phonetics; Phonology
 
6. Description Abstract In this paper we have studied the prosodic aspect of how Contrastive focus (henceforth CF) is marked in SCA (Standard Colloquial Assamese) and NVA (Nalbariya Variety of Assamese), two varieties of Assamese, a head-final eastern Indo-Aryan language (Goswami, 1982) with SOV as canonical word order. In our study we have found that these two varieties employ the same pitch accent (L*+H) and boundary tone (HP) to demarcate both focused and non-focused phrases; the final phrase (verb) cannot be focused. When the phrase length is limited to two to three syllables, the trailing tone of the pitch accent is left unrealized, and pitch pattern becomes L*HP. A focused phonological phrase differs from a non-focused one in terms of increased pitch range [(F0max at the right boundary – F0min at the first syllable)]. Following Ladd’s Free Gradient Hypothesis (Ladd, 1994; Gussenhoven, 1999), we propose here that in SCA and NVA pitch range is used in a categorically distinct way rather than in a gradient way. Similar to the phonological implementation of pitch range in the languages like Catalan (Borras-Comes, Vanrell, & Prieto, 2014), English (Ladd D. R., 1994; 1996), Spanish (Prieto, 2004) among others, pitch range may potentially be represented phonologically in the Assamese varieties.






























 
7. Publisher Organizing agency, location Equinox Publishing Ltd
 
8. Contributor Sponsor(s)
 
9. Date (YYYY-MM-DD) 22-Apr-2022
 
10. Type Status & genre Peer-reviewed Article
 
11. Type Type
 
12. Format File format PDF
 
13. Identifier Uniform Resource Identifier https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/books/article/view/30068
 
14. Identifier Digital Object Identifier 10.1558/equinox.30068
 
15. Source Journal/conference title; vol., no. (year) Equinox eBooks Publishing; Prosodic Variation (with)in Languages
 
16. Language English=en en
 
18. Coverage Geo-spatial location, chronological period, research sample (gender, age, etc.)
 
19. Rights Copyright and permissions Copyright 2014 Equinox Publishing Ltd