Contrast and accent in Dutch and Romanian

Marc Swerts

Communication & CognitionTilburg University

OverviewContrast and accent

Experimental paradigm

Results for Dutch and Romanian

Discussion and conclusion

Contrast and accentContrast refers to cases where one or more individual items are singled out from a larger (but limited) set of alternatives (Bolinger 1986; Cruttenden 1986; Chafe 1974, 1976)

Contrast can be signalled by pitch accents, especially when they occur in a non-default position (narrow focus accents)

Example (from Chafe 1974): RONALD made the hamburgers.

Contrast is controversialDebate about definition of contrastive accents:Contrastive accents and correctionsContrastive accents and newness accents (limited set of alternatives)

Debate about prosodic properties of contrastive accents:Do contrastive accents have a separate shape?Are contrastive accents more prominent than newness accents?

Some of the opposing views can be reconciled (Krahmer and Swerts 2001)

Today: other factorsForward and backward-looking contrastive relations

Distance between contrasting elements

Syntactic factors (inside NP)

Language differences

Problem 1: forward versus backwardA contrast relation can hold with a preceding or with following item

Example:First he wanted the BLUE ball, and then he wanted to RED ball

Hypothesis: backward-looking relations have a stronger impact on accent distribution than forward-looking relations (compare: anaphoric versus cataphoric)

Problem 2: effect of distanceContasting items can be close to each other or not

Example:1. The red ball touches the BLUE ball2. The triangle touches the red ball. Then it touches the BLUE ball.

Hypothesis:Contrastive relations between items that are close to each other have a stronger impact on accent distribution than distant ones.

Problem 3: lexico-syntactic factorsContrasts can occur on syntactically different lexical items (e.g. adjective versus noun)

Examples:He saw the RED ballHe saw the red BALL

Hypothesis:Contrasts on adjective have a stronger impact on accent distribution than contrasts on noun (nuclear accents can be preceded but not followed by other accents)

Problem 4: language differencesLanguages can differ in the extent to which they use accent distribution to signal contrast relations

Example:Dutch: ZWARTE driehoek (normal)Italian: TRIANGOLO nero (marked)

Hypothesis:Impact of contrast on accent distribution is stronger in Germanic languages than in Romance languages

Current studyAnalysis of relation between accents and contrast in Dutch and Romanian

Three questions:Forward- versus backwardlooking relationsRelations within and across sentence boundaries (distance)Syntactic function of a word

Use of experimental paradigm to elicit accent patterns: speakers are asked to describe different scenes of moving geometrical figures which they watch on a computer screen

DataParadigm used to elicit utterances from 10 Dutch and 10 Romanian speakers: utterances with SVO order in both languagesNPs were adj-noun in Dutch, noun-adj in Romanian

Speakers had to describe 36 scenes with 3 consecutive utterances; third sentence contained a target NP Dutch: blauw vierkant; gele driehoekRomanian: patratul albastru; triunghiul galben

All utterances labeled in terms of accent distribution by 2 independent annotators (few disagreements solved by consensus)

DUTCH RESULTS

Syntactic function: noun or adjectiveWithin sentence

Contrast on adjective Contrast on noun

Syntactic function: noun or adjective (2)Across sentence boundaries

Contrast on adjective Contrast on noun

Forward- backwardForward (subject)

Contrast on adjective Contrast on noun

Forward- backward (2)Backward (object)

Contrast on adjective Contrast on noun

Within/across sentenceContrast on adj within sentence Contrast on adj across sentenceContrast on noun across sentence Contrast on noun within sentence

ROMANIAN RESULTS

No effect of contrast at allIrrespective of discourse context: very consistent preference to put a single accent on adjective (second word in Romanian NP).

This effect is especially true when the NP occurs in object position; also, impressionistically the accent in utterance-final position often appears to be more prominent

Relatively many cases of completely deaccented NPs (both adjective and noun) when NP occurs in subject position (rarely happened in Dutch)

Example: Triunghiul albastru atinge patratul albastru

Conclusion: DutchAccent distribution is highly dependent on contrast relations between items

But in a complex way:

Backward-looking relations are stronger than forward-looking ones

Contrasts within sentences are stronger than across sentence boundaries

Contrasts on adjectives have stronger impact than contrasts on nouns

Conclusion: RomanianAccent distribution is not dependent at all on contrast relations

It seems to serve a demarcative function, i.e. to signal the right edge of a phrase

This is especially true when the NP appears in utterance-final position.