Contrastive FOCUS vs. presentational focus: prosodic evidence from right node raising in English

Abstract

This paper reports a difference in English between the prosodic properties of contrastive FOCUS and presentational focus entities when they are immediately followed within the sentence by a presentational focus.In this context, the contrastive FOCUS shows not only a L+H* pitch accent, but also a following phonological phrase break, marked by both a L-phrase accent and temporal disjuncture.In the same context, presentational focus shows a pitch accent H* and no phonological phrase break (no L-and no disjuncture).Since these differences in prosody correlating with different Focus types are not plausibly construed as the realization of distinct tonal morphemes, I suggest that the contrastive/presentational contrast is present in the interface informational/syntactic structure itself, and makes itself felt in the phonological representation through the action of syntax-phonology interface constraints which distinguish the two Focus types.