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 American English. 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 American English, 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 American English. The study sheds light on the role of dialect in the production of broad and narrow focus and expands our knowledge about the fine-grained details of the phonetic realization of prosodic focus marking in English.
Cite as: Kim, J., Arnhold, A. (2022) Prosodic focus marking in Canadian English. Proc. Speech Prosody 2022, 97-100, doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2022-20
@inproceedings{kim22_speechprosody,
author={Jiseung Kim and Anja Arnhold},
title={{Prosodic focus marking in Canadian English}},
year=2022,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2022},
pages={97--100},
doi={10.21437/SpeechProsody.2022-20}
}