ESCA Workshop on Prosody Lund, Sweden September 27-29, 1993

Accenting on Pronouns and Proper Names in Spontaneous Narrative

Christine Nakatani

Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

This paper reports empirical findings on discourse factors affecting the accentuation of pronouns and proper names. We account for the distributions of accent on referring expressions in a narrative sample by proposing a discourse constraint on the interpretation of accent function. Empirical support for this view is presented based on analysis of the discourse functions of accented subject pronouns within the framework of CENTERING THEORY.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Nakatani, Christine (1993): "Accenting on pronouns and proper names in spontaneous narrative", In Prosody-1993, 164-167.