A06 - Prosodic prominence in non-assertive speech acts - CRC1252 (Prominence in Language)

The current project investigates prosodic prominence marking that has been associated with certain non-assertive speech acts, e.g. expressive speech acts like exclamations, echo questions, rejecting questions, in relation to prosodic prominence marking that is the result of the information structure of an utterance (givenness-newness, contrast). It thus investigates the interaction of two prominence-lending semantic-pragmatic properties that can impose conflicting as well as additive requirements on prominence marking in the prosodic domain. The project explores how these requirements are realized by conducting prosodic production experiments with speakers of German. For a brief introduction to the project, see