Local and Global Cues in the Prosodic Realization of Broad and Narrow Focus in Bulgarian

Abstract

In this study, local and global prosodic cues for information structure are examined in the elicited production of six Bulgarian sentences. The sentences were produced in response to different questions, devised to prompt different focus realizations (broad focus and non-contrastive and contrastive narrow focus). Results show that speakers consistently differentiate broad and narrow focus by means of both local and global acoustic cues, by producing different pitch accent types on the nuclear syllable and reducing the ‘phonetic strength' of the default pre-nuclear accent in the narrow focus condition. Thus, the difference between the acoustic properties of the nuclear and the pre-nuclear accented syllables is smaller in the broad focus condition and greater in the narrow focus condition. Contrastive and non-contrastive narrow-focus accents are differentiated by local cues, i.e., by longer duration when the focus is early in the sentence and by global cues, i.e., by enhancing the tonal contrast between the nuclear prominence of CW2 and the pre-nuclear prominence of CW1 when the focus is late in the sentence.