Date: 15-Sep-2004 From: Kaiulani Kaneta <kkanetataylorandfrancis.com> Subject: Lexical, Pragmatic, and Positional Effects on Prosody in Two Dialects of Croatian and Serbian: Smiljanic
Title: Lexical, Pragmatic, and Positional Effects on Prosody in Two Dialects of Croatian and Serbian
Subtitle: An Acoustic Study
Series Title: Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
Hardback: ISBN: 0415971179 Pages: 192 Price: U.S. $ 70.00
Abstract:
This book looks at the interaction between pragmatics, prosody, and
lexical contrast as factors that condition variation in pitch and
duration in two closely related dialects of Croatian and Serbian. The
dialects differ in the presence or absence of a lexical contrast for
phonological pitch and for vowel duration. The research is based on
an acoustic study of pitch and duration, and the results indicate
that cross-dialectal variation in prosodic features can be as large
as the variation that is found across distinct languages. An
important finding is that the expression of narrow focus is limited
by the existence of lexical prosodic contrasts. This study sheds
light on the principles that govern the phonetic implementation of
lexical, prosodic, and pragmatic information, and has implications
for intonational phonology and the typology of prosodic systems. This
study also makes a significant contribution to Croatian and Serbian
dialectology.
Linguistic Field(s):
Phonology
Pragmatics
Typology
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