scholarly journals The prosody of focus projection: word stress and F0 patterns in Georgian

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Borise
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Narrow Focus ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Pitch Accents ◽  
Focus Projection

Based on experimental evidence, this paper shows that focus projection/percolation – the phenomenon by way of which prosodic prominence on a sub-constituent signals focus on the whole constituent – has a consistent prosodic realization in Georgian. The novelty of these findings lies in two properties of Georgian that have not been explored from the perspective of focus projection: it is a language with a dedicated focus position (linearly immediately preverbal) and one that does not rely on pitch accents in the expression of phrasal prosody (Skopeteas & Féry 2010; 2016). According to focus projection accounts (Selkirk 1984; Cinque 1993; Ladd 1996; Zubizarreta 1998, a. o.), utterances with narrow focus on the direct object are realized in the same way as broad focus utterances, since in all three cases prosodic prominence is realized on the direct object. In contrast, in utterances with narrow focus on the subject, the subject is the most prosodically prominent element, which means that the whole utterance has a different prosodic realization from that of broad focus contexts. This paper shows that the distribution of prosodic prominence in object- and subject-focus contexts in Georgian fits with this generalization. Specifically, the realization of utterances with narrowly focused objects does not differ from broad focus contexts in their F0 patterns and prominence of the stressed syllable, while narrowly focused subjects differ from subjects in broad focus utterances in both of these parameters.

scholarly journals Reframing ‘integration’: acknowledging and addressing five core critiques

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Spencer ◽  
Katharine Charsley
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Heuristic Model ◽  
Migration Studies ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Narrow Focus ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractEmpirical and theoretical insights from the rich body of research on ‘integration’ in migration studies have led to increasing recognition of its complexity. Among European scholars, however, there remains no consensus on how integration should be defined nor what the processes entail. Integration has, moreover, been the subject of powerful academic critiques, some decrying any further use of the concept. In this paper we argue that it is both necessary and possible to address each of the five core critiques on which recent criticism has focused: normativity; negative objectification of migrants as ‘other’; outdated imaginary of society; methodological nationalism; and a narrow focus on migrants in the factors shaping integration processes. We provide a definition of integration, and a revised heuristic model of integration processes and the ‘effectors’ that have been shown to shape them, as a contribution to a constructive debate on the ways in which these challenges for empirical research can be overcome.

Focus Attracts Attachment

2021 ◽  
pp. 002383092110333
Author(s):  
Katy Carlson ◽  
David Potter
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Auditory Comprehension ◽  
Perceptual Salience ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Sentence Interpretation ◽  
Pitch Accents

There is growing evidence that pitch accents as well as prosodic boundaries can affect syntactic attachment. But is this an effect of their perceptual salience (the Salience Hypothesis), or is it because accents mark the position of focus (the Focus Attraction Hypothesis)? A pair of auditory comprehension experiments shows that focus position, as indicated by preceding wh-questions instead of by pitch accents, affects attachment by drawing the ambiguous phrase to the focus. This supports the Focus Attraction Hypothesis (or a pragmatic version of salience) for both these results and previous results of accents on attachment. These experiments show that information structure, as indicated with prosody or other means, influences sentence interpretation, and suggests a view on which modifiers are drawn to the most important information in a sentence.

Indirect object in Manchu-Tungus languages: structural and semantic aspect (in the Orok language)

2020 ◽  
pp. 243-260
Author(s):  
L. V. Ozolinya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Direct Object ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Object Composition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Time ◽  
Semantic Aspect ◽  
Trivalent Verbs

For the first time, the paper provides the analysis of the Oroc language object as a syntactic unit combining the semantic and functional aspects of transitive or non-transitive verbs. In the Manchu-Tungus languages, the object is found to be expressed in the morphological forms of the case: direct – in the accusative case and the possessive forms of the designative case, indirect – in the forms of oblique cases. Constructions with indirect objects, the positions of which are filled with case forms of nouns, designate the objects on which the action is aimed, objects from which the action is sent or evaded, objects-addresses, objectsinstruments, etc. Both transitive or non-transitive verbs can take the position of the predicate. The necessary (direct object) and permissible (indirect object) composition of objects in the verb is determined by its valences: bivalent verbs open subjective (subject) and objective (direct object) valences; trivalent verbs reveal subjective, subjective-objective (part of the subject or indirect subject) and objective (indirect object) valences.

Convergence and intonation: historical evidence from Buenos Aires Spanish

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA COLANTONI ◽  
JORGE GURLEKIAN
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Italian Immigration ◽  
Early Peak ◽  
Intonational Phrases ◽  
Pitch Accents ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

In this paper we present experimental evidence showing that Buenos Aires Spanish differs from other Spanish varieties in the realization of pre-nuclear pitch accents and in the final fall in broad focus declarative utterances. Whereas other Spanish varieties have been described consistently as showing late peak alignments, Buenos Aires Spanish displays early peak alignments. The alignment pattern found in Buenos Aires broad focus declarative utterances is not totally foreign to Spanish: it is attested in a quite different function, i.e. to signal contrastive focus. In addition, Buenos Aires Spanish also seems to differ from other Spanish varieties in the realization of the intonation contour in utterance-final intonational phrases, where a pronounced tendency for down-stepped peaks is observed. We argue that these patterns, which emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, and coincided with the peak of Italian immigration, are due to a combination of direct and indirect transfer from Italian. As a result, two intonational systems that were typologically similar before contact took place (Hualde, 2002) became more similar after contact, in what can be interpreted as a case of convergence.

scholarly journals VIII. The influence of Molecular constitution and temperature on magnetic susceptibility. Part IV. - Further applications of the molecular field

1920 ◽  
Vol 220 (571-581) ◽  
pp. 247-289 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Susceptibility ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Molecular Theory ◽  
Molecular Field ◽  
Molecular Configuration ◽  
Material Medium ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Molecular Constitution ◽  
Crystalline Symmetry

The present work is a continuation of that published in ‘Phil. Trans., Royal Society,’ vol. 214, pp. 109-146, 1914 (Parts I. and II.) and vol. 215, pp. 79-103, 1915 (Part III.). It will lead to clearness in the following development of the subject if a brief résumé of these papers is given. A t the same time, I wish to discuss one or two points in connexion with the views which have been previously advanced and the relation between mechanical and molecular theory. In Part I. the experimental evidence brought forward has justified the hypothesis of molecular distortion enunciated at the outset. We have thereby been led to regard the molecular configuration of a material medium as a distorted one, and this applies particularly to a substance which is crystalline. The extent of this distortion is small, but is sufficient to account for the observed change of specific susceptibility which occurs on crystallization. Such change will naturally depend upon the particular crystalline symmetry assumed by the substance.

Experimental evidence that acorn woodpeckers recognize relationships among third parties no longer living together

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1257-1265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A Pardo ◽  
Eric L Walters ◽  
Walter D Koenig
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Melanerpes Formicivorus ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Acorn Woodpeckers ◽  
Group Relationships

Abstract Triadic awareness, or knowledge of the relationships between others, is essential to navigating many complex social interactions. While some animals maintain relationships with former group members post-dispersal, recognizing cross-group relationships between others may be more cognitively challenging than simply recognizing relationships between members of a single group because there is typically much less opportunity to observe interactions between individuals that do not live together. We presented acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus), a highly social species, with playback stimuli consisting of a simulated chorus between two different individuals, a behavior that only occurs naturally between social affiliates. Subjects were expected to respond less rapidly if they perceived the callers as having an affiliative relationship. Females responded more rapidly to a pair of callers that never co-occurred in the same social group, and responded less rapidly to callers that were members of the same social group at the time of the experiment and to callers that last lived in the same group before the subject had hatched. This suggests that female acorn woodpeckers can infer the existence of relationships between conspecifics that live in separate groups by observing them interact after the conspecifics in question no longer live in the same group as each other. This study provides experimental evidence that nonhuman animals may recognize relationships between third parties that no longer live together and emphasizes the potential importance of social knowledge about distant social affiliates.

Minimalisme et variation syntaxique

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-95
Author(s):  
Juvénal Ndayiragije
Keyword(s):  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Empirically Supported ◽  
Internal Focus ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Feature Checking ◽  
Focus Projection ◽  
Formal Features

AbstractThis article argues for a very restrictive theory of feature checking whereby only formal features of functional heads need to be checked for convergence. This theory, which enables us to dispense with most of the economy conditions assumed within the minimalist program (Chomsky 1995), is empirically supported by two syntactically and semantically related constructions in Kirundi: the Subject-Object Reversal and the Transitive Expletive Constructions. On parametric grounds, we argue that such constructions derive from the existence in Kirundi of a TP-internal focus projection whose [+focus] feature must be checked for convergence.

scholarly journals Further Observations on the Fungicidal Action of Bordeaux Mixtures

1914 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-232
Author(s):  
B. T. P. Barker ◽  
C. T. Gimingam
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Copper Sulphate ◽  
Copper Compound ◽  
Fungicidal Action ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Solvent Action

In earlier papers (this Journal, vol. IV. pp. 69 and 76) we have detailed the experimental evidence which led us to conclude (1) that the view as to the fungicidal action of Bordeaux mixtures favoured by Pickering, viz. the liberation of copper sulphate by atmospheric carbon dioxide, is untenable; and (2) that contact between the fungus and the copper compound present in the mixture will account largely for its efficiency owing to a solvent action on the part of the organism under certain conditions. Pickering (this Journal, V. p. 273) has criticised our general conclusions and the deductions which we have drawn from certain of our experiments; and therefore before describing our further work on the subject, a brief reference to some of the points which he has raised is desirable.

The dissociation of dolomite. II

1926 ◽  
Vol 21 (112) ◽  
pp. 21-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecil S. Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Close Agreement ◽  
Chemical Society ◽  
Related Subject ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

In this paper further evidence is put forward in support of a previous paper on the subject. Very soon after the reading of that paper, A. E. Mitchell read a paper before the Chemical Society on a closely related subject. Working quite independently, and employing other methods of investigation, Mitchell arrived at conclusions in close agreement with those detailed in the former paper. H.L.J. Bäckström has criticized Mitchell's paper, raising some objections 'against the experimental evidence produced aud the … way of interpreting it'. Where Bäckström objections touch on anything in Mitchell's paper which is incidentally akin to any of the work described in this or the earlier paper, they will be discussed herein.

Nuclear Pitch Accents in Majorcan Catalan Declaratives: Phonology, Phonetics, Diachrony

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miquel Simonet
Keyword(s):  
Read Aloud ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Relative Pitch ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Production Experiment ◽  
Pitch Accents

AbstractThe present paper reports on the findings of an acoustic study of nuclear pitch accents in Majorcan Catalan. A total of 10 speakers participated in a production experiment. Nuclear pitch accents were investigated by measuring relative pitch changes between several sequential temporal landmarks in and around nuclear stressed syllables in read-aloud declaratives. The results provide evidence for the presence of a low (L) tone associated with the nuclear stressed syllable for 9 of the 10 participants, and that of a high (H) trailing tone for only 4 of the participants. The implications of these results for a phonological analysis of Majorcan Catalan nuclear pitch accents, as well as the diachrony of nuclear pitch accents in Iberian Romance, are discussed.

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