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Article published In:
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Vol. 43:2 (2020) ► pp.191–225

Information structure and intonational accent in Burmese

| University of Münster

It tends to be assumed that tonal languages do not make use of intonational tones and accent location for the purpose of conveying information structural aspects of the utterance. This study of read-aloud stories in colloquial Burmese shows that this tonal language does resort to this sort of intonational means for information-structuring reasons. The prosody of Burmese exhibits identifiable intonational patterns, which function on the level of accentual phrases. An accentual phrase constitutes the basic prosodic unit, and it is there that we find the real interaction of information structure, intonation and tone. Accentual phrases are organised around a single accent, the location of which depends on information structural factors. Sentences can consist of a single accentual phrase or a few phrases, while the exact partition into such phrases is also motivated by information- and discourse-structuring considerations.

Keywords: Burmese, prosody, information structure, accent, topic, focus
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Goals of the study, the corpus and the theoretical framework
  • 3.Burmese language: Phonology and typological profile
  • 4.Previous research on Burmese prosody
  • 5.Accentual phrase and locus of accent in Burmese
    • 5.1Accentual phrase
    • 5.2“Pure” verbal phrase and its intonation
    • 5.3Expanded verbal phrase and its prosody
    • 5.4De-accenting of the initial constituent
    • 5.5Conclusion
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1The proposed analysis vs. the overall corpus data
    • 6.2Cross-linguistic and theoretical perspective
  • Note
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 4 January 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.20009.oze
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