Broad and Narrow focus marking in Naija (Nigerian Pidgin) : the role of prosody
Résumé
This paper presents an investigation of the prosodic realisation of narrow and broad focus in Naija, a postcreole language of Nigeria spoken by 100 million people. As other West-African English lexifier pidgins, it has limited morphological complexity, flexible word order, and content words receive a +H pitch. Previous analyses of annotated spontaneous speech recordings identified two types of perceived prominences in Naija: a pitch peak (PPROM) and an extended duration (DPROM). This study identifies two focus conditions (narrow and broad) and seeks to establish whether they correlate with these perceived prominences. It was found that narrow focus uses any of two strategies: (1) the element in focus can occur anywhere in the IU, and coincides with the durational
prominence, or (2) a na (copula) + focus element construction, which then receives the pitch prominence associated with first position in the IU.
Broad focus, however, receives no prosodic marking.
Domaines
LinguistiqueOrigine | Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte |
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