Abstract
AbstractThis chapter presents the results of a production experiment testing the recursivity of prosodic realization of focus in Tokyo Japanese. Tokyo Japanese wh-questions obligatorily exhibit focus prosody, which starts from a wh-phrase (WH) and continues until the question particle (Q) that binds the wh-phrase (Deguchi & Kitagawa, 2002; Ishihara, 2002, 2003). The current study examines the case where one WH–Q dependency is embedded inside the scope of another WH–Q dependency (namely, a matrix wh-question containing an indirect wh-question, e.g., Who remembers what John drank?). The results confirmed a claim that focus prosody can be realized recursively, while they also showed inter-speaker variation as to the availability of such recursive focus prosody. The chapter discusses the results’ implications for the theoretical analysis of recursivity of prosodic structure as well as recursivity of information structure.
Publisher
Springer Nature Singapore
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