Anticipatory marking of (non-corrective) contrastive focus by the Initial Rise in French

Abstract

This study addresses tonal marking of non-corrective contrastive focus in French. Speakers read aloud sentences composed of two parallel clauses, where the structure of the post-verbal constituent under focus was varied by the presence or absence in the second clause of the final adjective appearing in the first clause (signaling Noun-focus or NP-focus, respectively). This way, we were able to test whether the Initial Rise (i.e., LHi) is a marker of the span of an upcoming non-corrective contrast in the second clause. We posited that French speakers mark contrast tonally in the first and/or second clause. Corroborating previous findings, we found that a faster speech rate is associated with fewer Initial Rises. More importantly, an Initial Rise occurs on the direct object of the first clause more often in narrow focus. Additionally, the height of the Initial Rise peak does not depend on focus structure. These results suggest that anticipatory use of the Initial Rise may signal an upcoming contrast and reveals additional complexity in the tonal encoding of the left edge of a contrastively focused constituent.