Abstract
The study reported on in this paper is part of a larger project on the acoustic determinants of focusing in discourse (van Donzel & Koopmans-van Beinum, 1995,1996,1997a, 1997b;van Donzel, 1997, 1999;Koopmans- van Beinum & van Donzel, 1996). It is generally assumed that speakers make use of F0-variations to signal various types of information in their speech. For instance, information that is new in the discourse (new to the listener), and thus has to be put in focus, will generally be pronounced with a pitch accent. Information that has been mentioned previously will generally not be realized with an accent (cf. Nooteboom & Terken, 1982; Nooteboom & Kruyt, 1987). In this way, the speaker may give “instructions” to the listener as to where he/she should pay attention, in other words, which parts of the discourse are important.
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van Donzel, M., Beinum, F.KV. (2000). Pitch Movements and Information Structure in Spontaneous Dutch Discourse. In: Botinis, A. (eds) Intonation. Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4317-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4317-2_7
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