PROSODY AND PRAGMATICS OF UTTERANCES
The paper outlines the interface of prosodic structure and pragmatic features. In line with cross-linguistic typological generalizations, the primary function of intonation is identified as manifesting salient discourse status, signaling topic-focus discourse functions, and delineating discourse components, clauses and phrases. General correlation is identified between the pitch accent placement and the discourse pragmatic function of Focus. Pitch accent manifests the part of the proposition containing assertion, new, unrecoverable or unexpected information.
Keywords: typology, prosody, pragmatics
Issue: 9, 2011
Series of issue: Issue 9
Rubric: Germanic Languages
Pages: 34 — 37
Downloads: 925