jabeen15@interspeech_2015@ISCA

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#1 Immediately postverbal questions in urdu [PDF] [Copy] [Kimi1]

Authors: Farhat Jabeen ; Tina Bögel ; Miriam Butt

This production study investigates the interaction of prosody, word order and information structure with respect to wh-constituents in Urdu. We contrasted immediately preverbal wh-constituents with immediately postverbal ones. The preverbal position is the default focus position in Urdu; the appearance of wh-constituents in the immediately postverbal position within the verbal complex is not well understood. In order to test various possible factors governing the appearance of immediately postverbal wh-constituents, target sentences with wh-constituents in both pre- and postverbal positions were presented in different pragmatic contexts and given to native speakers to pronounce. The results show a clear difference in prosodic realization between the pre- and the postverbal position. The preverbal position is consistent with focus prosody, the postverbal wh-phrases appear to occur when the verb is in focus.