The production and perception of prenuclear second occurrence focus.

Abstract

Semantic focus in English is typically marked by intonational prominence, most canonically by a pitch accent. One case that has been presented as an exception to this generalization, however, is that of second occurrence (SO) focus. An SO focus is a repeated but focused item, usually associated with a focus sensitive operator such as “only” or “even.” Previous studies have suggested that SO foci lack pitch accents for phonological rather than information structural reasons, in most cases examining such foci in the postnuclear domain. We present acoustic and phonological data that demonstrate that SO foci also lack considerably in intonational prominence (particularly in terms of F0) when prenuclear, although they show increased duration. Additionally, the perceptibility of prenuclear SO focus is tested. Perceptually weak prosodic marking would suggest an important role for pragmatics in a focal interpretation, as has been suggested previously for SO focus.