Prosodic focus marking in Canadian English

Abstract

The current study investigated how broad focus, narrow focus and given information are produced in Canadian English. Given previous findings that showed different varieties of English signal information structure differently, we hypothesized that the effects of focus on acoustic correlates involving duration, f0, and intensity would manifest differently in Canadian English than in Mainstream American English (MAE). Thirty-eight native speakers of Canadian English produced 24 short transitive sentences in different focus conditions: broad focus and narrow focus in different locations (Subject, Verb, Object). A total of 2,736 words were analyzed. While some acoustic correlates such as duration and maximum intensity replicated the same patterns as previous findings in MAE, mean intensity and f0 measures showed different patterns. These results suggest that speakers of Canadian English may employ a different set of acoustic correlates from speakers of MAE. The study sheds light on the role of dialect in the production of focus and givenness and expands our knowledge about the fine-grained details of the phonetic realization of prosodic focus marking in English.