The optimal placement of up and ab – a comparison

The particle verb construction (PVC), also referred to in the literature as phrasal verb or separable complex verb, occurs in most if not all of the Germanic languages. The work presented here deals with a comparison of the transitive PVC in English and German. In English, the construction occurs in two alternating word orders (They called off the concert vs. They called the concert off ). In German, on the other hand, only one order is possible (Sie sagten das Konzert ab vs. *Sie sagten ab das Konzert; *Sie absagten das Konzert). The central question is why this kind of word order alternation is possible in a language with otherwise relatively strict word order, such as English, but not in a related language such as German, which is otherwise freer in its constituent ordering, allowing, e.g., for scrambling. In this article, the pattern is explained in terms of (the ranking of) violable universal constraints from different modules of the grammar. I introduce a PVC-related syntactic constraint which punishes particle pied-piping. I argue that it is the rank of this constraint with respect to a number of prosodic constraints that is responsible for the variation between English and German

The nature and use of Icelandic prenuclear and nuclear pitch accents : evidence from F0 alignment and syllable/segment duration

Two production studies and one perception study were designed to systematically test F0 alignment and segment duration in Icelandic pitch accents with a view to investigating previous claims about the inventory of distinct intonational categories. Four different conditions were tested: (i) prenuclear pitch accents, (ii) nuclear accents in sentence-final position in sentences with either broad focus or (iii) with final narrow focus, and (iv) nuclear narrow focus accents in non-final position. The alignment results are such that (i) prenuclear accents are signalled by a late rise (L*H), while final nuclear accents are signalled by an early rise; (ii) F0 peaks in prefinal nuclear accents are aligned earlier than in prenuclear accents, but later than in final nuclear accents, suggesting a prosodic boundary effect. The duration measurements suggest a positional, but no focus, effect on the duration of the accented syllable and its vowel, such that syllables/vowels earlier in the sentence are longer than later ones

The prosodic phrasing of parenthetical comment clauses in spontaneous spoken language : evidence from icelandic held ég

Based on the analysis of corpus data, this paper investigates the prosodic phrasing of the Icelandic parenthetical comment clause (CC) held e g (‘believe/ think I’; I think, I believe) and relates the results to current prosodic theory. The main findings are as follows. (i) A variety of intonational phrasing patterns is possible with CC held e g, allowing both for prosodic separation such that the CC is phrased in its own Intonational Phrase (IP), and prosodic integration, such that the CC is phrased in one IP with surrounding material. (ii) Prosodic integration is by far the more common pattern. (iii) The prosodic phrasing of CCs is related to their meaning via prominence. In particular, CCs which can be argued to have conventional implicatures (CI) semantics are prosodically prominent and phrased separately; CCs whose primary function is one of mitigation are unstressed and integrated. (iv) The observed intonational phrasing patterns can be accounted for in terms of the interaction of the syntax-prosody interface constraint MATCH CLAUSE with prosodic markedness constraints.publishe

An intonational grammar for Icelandic

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the tonal grammar of Icelandic and to complement the tone inventory as previously described in the literature (Arnason 1998). Specifically, types of pitch accents and edge tones and their combinations in neutral declaratives and questions, and in utterances containing narrow focus are addressed. Two pitch accent types (H∗ and L∗ ) and two edge tones (H- and L-) are identified, for which evidence has not been found in previous research. Moreover, the paper shows for declaratives, that along with downstep, Icelandic has upstep across Intonational Phrases. Upstep applies to a series of pitch peaks. It may occur in neutral declaratives and in utterances with final narrow focus. Overall, the results of this study provide a substantial addition to our knowledge of Icelandic intonational phonology

The intonation of the Icelandic other-initiated repair expressions Ha ‘Huh’ and Hvað segirðu/Hvað sagðirðu ‘What do/did you say’

It has been shown in the literature that cross-linguistically, the other-initiated repair element ‘huh’ is typically realised with rising intonation. Icelandic has exceptional status in this respect in that it has falling intonation with Ha [haː] ‘huh’. The literature claims that it is language-specific interrogative prosody that accounts for this exceptional status of Icelandic. More specifically, it argues that falling intonation is the default for questions in Icelandic and that the other-initiated repair interjection shares its intonational features with interrogatives. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, using map-task data, it confirms previous results for the intonation of Icelandic Ha, and in addition shows that its more complex relative Hvað segirðu/Hvað sagðirðu ‘What do/did you say?’ is realised with falling intonation as well. Both expressions are realised with an H∗ pitch accent followed by downward pitch movement to L%. Secondly, the paper argues, for a number of reasons, against the assumption that question prosody is enough to account for the Icelandic pattern, and it suggests instead that Ha and Hvað segirðu/Hvað sagðirðu are in fact not specifically marked in intonation, but are realised with a combination of pitch accent and boundary tone found across utterance types in Icelandic