This article examines the V3 particle så in Fenno-Swedish, where the particle can follow both initial arguments and adjuncts in root clauses. In Mainland Scandinavian, this distribution is rather strictly limited to the latter context. The starting point is that the V3-pattern-triggering så is the ‘general adverbial resumptive’ in copy-left dislocation. In copy-left dislocation, an agreeing resumptive item causes a similar V3 pattern, where the adverbial spell-outs of the resumptive are partially interchangeable with så. Three hypotheses are considered. Firstly, så may have become fully generalised resumptive being interchangeable with all spell-outs. Secondly, the distribution could include all initial elements, also wh-phrases and negation markers, that are not pure operators. Finally, the paper suggests that the phenomenon is partially prosodic, and så satisfies a preference of having an anacrusis in the prosodic constituent including the finite verb.

The results of a production experiment show that English speakers distinguish elements under contrastive focus from elements that are merely new in the discourse. A novel paradigm eliciting both contrastively focused and merely discourse-new elements in the same sentence avoids differences in information structure and pitch accenting in the context surrounding the target elements that were confounds in previous studies on the topic. Elements under contrastive focus show greater duration, relative intensity, and F0 movement with respect to other elements in the utterance than elements that are new in the discourse but not under contrastive focus. We argue that the phonetic differences revealed here cannot be explained in terms of systematic manipulation of pitch-accent type or phrasal boundaries, and should instead be analyzed as differences in phrase-level phonological prominence for contrastively focused and merely discourse-new elements.

This article introduces a new way to explain how information structure is signaled prosodically in English. I claim that METRICAL STRUCTURE plays a central role (Ladd 2008, Truckenbrodt 1995). Information structure (defined as in Steedman 1991 and Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998) places strong constraints on the PROBABIILISTIC mapping of words onto metrical prosodic structure—that is, foci usually align with nuclear accents and theme/rheme units with prosodic phrases, and themes are less metrically prominent than rhemes. It is shown that focus position, scope, and pragmatic interpretation are then derived by manipulating EXPECTED PROMINENCE within metrical structure. Broadly, the more prominent a word than expected, the more likely a contrastive reading; the less prominent, the more likely a givenness reading. Both constructed and naturally occurring examples from the Switchboard corpus are used.

The status of subject clitics in French has been heavily debated (Kayne 1975, Rizzi 1986, Roberge 1990, Auger 1994b, Miller & Sag 1997, De Cat 2007b, and many others). Distributional properties of French subject clitics have led Kayne (1975), Rizzi (1986), and others to analyze them as argument-bearing elements occupying canonical subject position, cliticizing to the verb only at the level of the phonology. While this hypothesis enjoys a wide following, a growing body of evidence suggests that it fails to capture patterns of subject-clitic use in colloquial French dialects/registers (Roberge 1990, Auger 1994b, Zribi-Hertz 1994, Miller & Sag 1997). Using new evidence from prosodic and corpus analyses, speaker judgments, and crosslinguistic typology, this article argues that (i) European Colloquial French exhibits differences from Standard French that impact how subject clitics are best analyzed, and more specifically (ii) subject clitics in European Colloquial French are affixal agreement markers, not phonological clitic arguments.

This study examines the utterance-initial prosodic marking of sarcasm in English and its perception in listeners who did and listeners who did not self-identify as being on the autism spectrum. We ask (i) whether speakers use prosody to mark sarcasm in the early, ‘pre-target’ portion of an utterance (that is, in the portion before a ‘target’ word most closely associated with the sarcastic intent occurs), (ii) whether individuals vary in how they mark sarcasm, (iii) whether listeners reliably recognize sarcasm from pre-target prosody alone, and (iv) whether recognition accuracy varies by speaker or self-identified autistic traits. Eight American English speakers were recorded producing utterances presented in contexts conducive to either sarcasm or sincerity. Pre-target parts were presented in a two-alternative forced-choice experiment to individuals who either did (n=51) or did not (n=44) self-identify as being on the autism spectrum, and were examined for syllable duration and f0-related properties (maximum, minimum, range, and wiggliness). Results show that speakers distinguish sarcasm and sincerity in the pre-target region with duration being the most salient marker. Most listeners recognize sarcasm from pre-target fragments, but there is variation in how well each speaker is perceived. Whether the listener self-identified as being on the autism spectrum or not does not predict sarcasm and sincerity recognition accuracy. The results provide evidence that utterance-initial prosody contributes to sarcasm recognition, with the proviso that speaker and listener variation be taken into account.

Learning a second language (L2) is challenging partly due to perceptual strategies inherited from learners’ first language. For example, speakers of tone languages like Mandarin over-use pitch in English prosody perception and production. We developed a novel training paradigm to help Mandarin learners adopt more native-like strategies by enhancing their use of duration relative to pitch cues during prosody categorization. After prosody training, participants used duration more during phrase boundary categorization but showed no clear change for contrastive focus and lexical stress, suggesting that cue weighting training is most effective when targeting a feature’s primary cue. The control group, who practiced English vocabulary, relied more on pitch in lexical stress categorization and phrase boundary production after training, suggesting that without targeted instruction, listeners default to existing strategies. Our findings demonstrate that although default strategies in L2 speech perception are difficult to resist, lifelong perceptual habits can be adjusted with training.

It is well known that floating tones can associate both within a word and across a word boundary. In relation to floating quantity, however, there is extensive evidence for association within a word, but not across a word boundary. This research report presents evidence for the latter configuration in Shilluk, a West Nilotic language. Shilluk noun forms may end in floating quantity, and this quantity is realized only on following vocalic prefixes, that is, across a word boundary. The investigation includes a descriptive analysis of the phenomenon and a production study based on data from ten Shilluk speakers.

Stress in Gujarati (Indo-Aryan, India and Pakistan) has been alternately claimed to be strictly positional or sensitive to vowel sonority. The latter analyses figure prominently in arguments for scalar markedness constraints (de Lacy 2002, 2006). This study presents acoustic measures and speaker intuitions to evaluate both the positional and sonority-driven stress hypotheses. The acoustic results support weakly cued positional stress, though speaker intuitions for primary stress placement were inconsistent. This replicates Shih's (2018) negative findings, and indicates that Gujarati stress should not figure in discussions of sonority-driven stress or associated theoretical proposals.

Ticuna (ISO: tca; Peru, Colombia, Brazil) displays a larger tone inventory - five level tones - than any other Indigenous American language outside Oto-Manguean. Based on recent fieldwork, this article argues that, in addition to these tone properties, the Cushillococha variety of Ticuna also displays stress. Stress corresponds to morphological structure, licenses additional tonal and segmental contrasts, conditions many phonological processes, and plays a central role in grammatical tone processes marking clause type. Empirically, these findings expand our understanding of word prosody in tone languages in general and Amazonian languages in particular. Theoretically, they challenge current models of stress-conditioned phonology and grammatical tone.

This paper presents rhythmic syncope in Mojeño Trinitario, an Arawak language spoken in lowland Bolivia. In this language, every vowel that is in a weak prosodic position can syncopate. The syncope pattern of Mojeño Trinitario is remarkable for several reasons. First, it involves a regular, categorical and complete deletion rather than a statistical reduction of vowels. Second, it applies similarly to words with either of two stress patterns: iambic words, which make up the great majority of words, and trochaic ones, much less numerous. Third, a great variety of consonant sequences are the result of syncope, and syllabification applies again after syncope. Fourth, rhythmic syncope actually underapplies: almost half of the vowels that are in a position to syncopate are maintained, and vowel quality plays a statistical role in immunity to syncope. Fifth, due to a rich morphology and a set of complex phonotactic rules applying sequentially, syncope leads to extreme opacity. The data presented in tins paper in a theory-neutral way contribute to the typology of rhythmic syncope. It will also be of interest to phonologists considering constraint-based vs. derivational models of phonology.

This paper establishes the lexical tone contrasts in the Nigerian language Izon, focusing on evidence for floating tone. Many tonal languages show effects of floating tone, though typically in a restricted way, such as occurring with only a minority of morphemes, or restricted to certain grammatical enviromnents. For Izon, the claim here is that all lexical items sponsor floating tone, making it ubiquitous across the lexicon and as common as pre-associated tone. The motivation for floating tone comes from the tonal patterns of morphemes in isolation and within tone groups. Based on these patterns, all lexical morphemes are placed into one of four tone classes defined according to winch floating tones they end in. Class A morphemes end in a floating ( ‘wife’), class B in ( ‘salt’), class C in ( ‘sand’), and class D in ( ‘him’). This paper provides extensive empirical support for tins analysis and discusses several issues which emerge under ubiquitous floating tone. Issues include the principled allowance of OCP(T) violations, and the propensity for word-initial vowels and low tone to coincide.

Sound symbolism is a phenomenon with broad relevance to the study of language and mind, but there has been a disconnect between its investigations in linguistics and psychology. This study tests the sound-symbolic potential of ideophones—words described as iconic—in an experimental task that improves over prior work in terms of ecological validity and experimental control. We presented 203 ideophones from five languages to eighty-two Dutch listeners in a binary-choice task, in four versions: original recording, full diphone resynthesis, segments-only resynthesis, and prosody-only resynthesis. Listeners guessed the meaning of all four versions above chance, confirming the iconicity of ideophones and showing the viability of speech synthesis as a way of controlling for segmental and suprasegmental properties in experimental studies of sound symbolism. The success rate was more modest than prior studies using pseudowords like bouba/kiki, implying that assumptions based on such words cannot simply be transferred to natural languages. Prosody and segments together drive the effect: neither alone is sufficient, showing that segments and prosody work together as cues supporting iconic interpretations. The findings cast doubt on attempts to ascribe iconic meanings to segments alone and support a view of ideophones as words that combine arbitrariness and iconicity. We discuss the implications for theory and methods in the empirical study of sound symbolism and iconicity.

The field of linguistic typology has made great strides in mapping the structures to be found across languages. We can now ask whether speakers of all languages distribute their ideas over such structures in the same ways. This question is explored here by examining complement constructions in three genealogically and areally unrelated languages. Each offers glimpses into some factors that shape grammar over time. Crosslinguistic differences in grammar arise from what speakers have chosen to say over millennia, but even languages spoken today can provide snapshots of moments in such processes, if we care to listen to their speakers.

The received wisdom is that word-order alternations in Slavic languages arise as a direct consequence of word-order-related information-structure constraints such as ‘Place given expressions before new ones’. In this article, we compare the word-order hypothesis with a competing one, according to which word-order alternations arise as a consequence of a prosodic constraint: ‘Avoid stress on given expressions’. Based on novel experimental and modeling data, we conclude that the prosodic hypothesis is more adequate than the word-order hypothesis. Yet we also show that combining the strengths of both hypotheses provides the best fit for the data. Methodologically, our article is based on gradient acceptability judgments and multiple regression, which allows us to evaluate whether violations of generalizations like ‘Given precedes new’ or ‘Given lacks stress’ lead to a consistent decrease in acceptability and to quantify the size of their respective effects. Focusing on the empirical adequacy of such generalizations rather than on specific theoretical implementations also makes it possible to bridge the gap between different linguistic traditions and to directly compare predictions emerging from formal and functional approaches.