Perception of “tonal focus” in Greek
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2010/03/0031/000151Keywords:
Greek, focus, tonal structure, tonal movement, perceptionAbstract
The present paper reports on the way tonal correlates of focus impact its identification in Greek simple declaratives. The material was based on 4 utterances with different focus placement. Manipulation of the F0 contour and duration of the original utterances resulted in a list of 18 utterances, repeated 10 times each, and presented randomly to each of 10 informants. The informants were asked to indicate what part of each utterance bore focus. The results showed that: (1) F0 is the most reliable parameter for focus perception, especially the rate of tonal rise/fall, (2) duration expansion is not sufficient for focus perception, and (3) combining F0 and duration affects successful focus identification.
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Copyright (c) 2010 Olga Nikolaenkova (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
