We are happy to announce the next talk in the phonology colloquium by Fabian Schubö (U Stuttgart). Abstract below.
The talk will take place online. However, we will have the hybrid kit working in the seminar room as well. If you are registered in Olat you’ll find the Zoom link there. If you want to participate via zoom, please register via email to Alina Gregori: gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de
Title: Givenness and stress rejection
Date: January 26, 2022
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct
Place: Online Zoom / IG 4.301 (hybrid setting)
Everybody is cordially invited!
Abstract:
This paper addresses the impact of givenness on phrasal stress assignment in German. It has been observed for English that nuclear stress is rejected on given elements that are part of the focused material if another focused word is available to bear nuclear stress (e.g., Ladd 1996). It is shown that the same effect applies to German. There are various proposals of constraints that militate against prosodic prominence on given elements. The present paper reviews these proposals and argues in favor of a constraint that is restricted to banning nuclear stress on given elements, but not phrasal stress in general (as has been introduced in Frey and Truckenbrodt 2015 and Büring 2016: ch.2). The argument is based on the observation for German that phrasal stress commonly occurs on pre-focal given constituents (e.g., Baumann et al. 2007, Féry and Kügler 2008) and may as well be present in post-focal position (Kügler and Féry 2017). The paper offers an analysis in the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004) that captures the aforementioned stress rejection.