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Information Structure in Lesser-described Languages: Studies in prosody and syntax
Edited by Evangelia Adamou, Katharina Haude and Martine Vanhove
[Studies in Language Companion Series 199] 2018
► pp. 51–84

Chapter 3
Prosodic and morphological focus marking in Ixcatec (Otomanguean)

 | CNRS
 | University of California at Santa Barbara
 | University of California at Santa Barbara
This paper presents the first description of the expression of focus in Ixcatec, a nearly extinct language of Mexico. The study is based on experimental tasks carried out with the last three fluent speakers of Ixcatec. Prosodic analysis shows that in Ixcatec, a language with three lexical tones, contrastive focus is associated with raised F0, lack of focus is marked through lowered F0 and decreased duration, and corrective focus is signaled through various speaker-specific means. Finally, this study shows that morphological and phonetic properties display a complex interaction that contradicts the view that focus may be conveyed through either morphological or phonetic exponents but not both.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Focus cross-linguistically
  • 3.Some background on Ixcatec
  • 4.The expression of focus through prosodic and morphological means
    • 4.1Predictions
    • 4.2Methodology
      • 4.2.1Participants
      • 4.2.2Stimuli
      • 4.2.3Procedure
      • 4.2.4Recordings
      • 4.2.5Measurements
      • 4.2.6Statistical analysis and evaluation
    • 4.3Results
      • 4.3.1The main effect of F0
      • 4.3.2The interactions
      • 4.3.3The relationship between the morphological and phonetic expression of focus
    • 4.4Discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 2 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.199.03ada
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