FOCUS When we say something is focused in an utterance, what do we mean, and can something be pitch accented in English without being focused? 1) Distinguish between "focus" meaning "in focus in the information structure" and "focus" meaning "prosodically marked as being in focus in the information structure." Trick is to be aware that people often use "focused" as a kind of shorthand for "prosodically marked as being in focus." 2) Yes, you can have pitch accents that do are not functioning to prosodically mark focus. WHERE TO PLACE ACCENT LABELS Several of you have asked about where to place the label for a pitch accent, particularly if you want to be able to both (1) recover which is the accented syllable from the placement of the label and (2) extract an F0 value that can be used as a measure of "the target" for the starred tone. Here's what the "ToBI Annotation Conventions" say about this: In a waves(tm) label file, the pitch accent tone label should be placed within the nucleus of the accented syllable (i.e. the syllable that is phonologically associated to the starred tone of the accent), and always before the orthographic label and the break index mark at the end of the word. If the F0 peak or valley for the starred H or L tone does not occur within the accented syllable, labellers who so wish may mark the early (or late) F0 event with `>' (or `<') pointing to the following (or preceding) pitch accent label. Thus, for example, if the F0 maximum for a L+H* occurs after the end of the accented syllable, a labeller may mark the time of the F0 peak with a `<' pointing back to the L+H* label. When you are trying to place the label on the peak (or valley), and it is clear that the highest (or lowest) F0 is due to some segmental perturbation, then a strategy for trying to get at the target point for accent is to use the amplitude contour. The H* accent on the first syllable of "carpeting" in <> is a good example of a case where you might use this strategy. This is also a good strategy if you are labelling a H+!H* and the F0 is continuously falling throughout the accented syllable, as in. The nuclear accent in the last phrase in the second utterance in <> is a good example. NOTES ON PRACTICE THREE DIFFICULT ------------------------------------------------------------- <> The analysis that the "Guidelines ... " developers made for these two contrasting utterances was: Do you really think it's that one. | ] H* L-L% Do you really think it's that one. [ | ] %H L* L-H% This pair illustrates the importance of timing of rises and falls in parsing the tune. I think the speaker intended the second utterance to be an example of what Liberman & Sag (1974) called the "contradiction contour" (and that is how the ToBI developers transcribed it). See myname.Collection for a nice spontaneous utterance of this contour, to get an idea of its meaning. ------------------------------------------------------------- <> My classmate who lives in a treehouse ... | ] | | ] H* H- L+H* H* L-L% contrast meaning to <> My classmate who lives in a treehouse ... | ] | | ] H* L-H% H* H* L-H% We put a H- (and BI=3) at the first clause boundary in <> to account for what seemed to be leveling off of the F0 over the end of "classmate", but if you hear this is gradually falling (i.e., just interpolation into the L of the accent on "lives" with BI=1), it would be hard to argue against that analysis. The main thing is the distinction in meaning that is facilitated by having the full intonational phrase boundary in <> but not in <>. NOTES ON PRACTICE FOUR EASY ------------------------------------------------------------- <> The analysis that the "Guidelines ... " developers made for these two contrasting utterances was: He sold the business to somebody else. | | | | ] H* !H* *? !H* L-L% ------------------------------------------------------------- <> State law now requires public construction projects | | | | ] | ] H* !H* !H* L+H* L-L% H* L-H% to set aside one percent of their budgets for artwork. | ] | ] | ] H* L- H* L- H* L-L% Note the frequent intermediate phrase breaks that is typical of these "broadcaster style" and how this makes us "recalibrate" our sense of what is a full intonational phrase break for this speaker. (In another style we might have hesitated more before marking the boundary after "requires" as a full intonational phrase break.) The "for" has the nuclear accent, not because it is in focus, but because "artwork" is given in information (in this story about state support for art), and there is no other word in this phrase that can then bear the obligatory accent. ------------------------------------------------------------- <> This performed example illustrates the same kind of accenting of the particle as did <>. The "do it" is given information within the focused "how to do it" (which is in contrast with the "gotta do it" in the first clause). See Ladd (1980), p. 81, for another example: I can't imagine what it would be like to be a dentist, but I'm awfully glad there are guys who want to BE dentists. PRACTICE FOUR INTERMEDIATE ------------------------------------------------------------- <> This is another performed example from Ladd (1980), who discussed on pp. 64-69, in the context of talking about the near equivalence between (some) pre-nuclear accents and post-nuclear deaccented material in terms of many of the focus-marking aspects of accent. ------------------------------------------------------------- <> The immediate context for this is <> he's a physicist 'n works at NASA. | ] | ] L+H* L- H* L-L% ------------------------------------------------------------- <>, <>, <>, <> These are more broadcaster style, with plenty of intermediate phrase breaks, making for lots of nuclear accents (marking a densely packed sequence of focused new information).