Journal article
Focus marking asymmetries in Colloquial and Standard French: A stochastic optimality-theoretic account
Journal of French language studies, Vol.26(3), pp.299-326
11/2016
DOI: 10.1017/S0959269515000265
Abstract
This article investigates the grammatical realization of the notion of focus in Colloquial French and Standard French. Based on two production experiments, the article reveals three findings: (i) focus marking is not as categorical as previously acknowledged, (ii) focus marking asymmetry for subjects vs. non-subjects is only supported in CoF and (iii) there is no strict relationship between focus realization and interpretation in either variety. I develop a stochastic optimality-theory analysis, which explains the canonical-cleft sentence alternation in terms of prosody and expands on past literature by accounting for the variation observed both within and across language variety.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Focus marking asymmetries in Colloquial and Standard French: A stochastic optimality-theoretic account
- Creators
- EMILIE DESTRUEL - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of French language studies, Vol.26(3), pp.299-326
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, UK
- DOI
- 10.1017/S0959269515000265
- ISSN
- 0959-2695
- eISSN
- 1474-0079
- Number of pages
- 28
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 11/2016
- Academic Unit
- French and Italian; Linguistics
- Record Identifier
- 9984002416502771
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