Blackwell Reference Online

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The term sentence prosody encompasses three distinct aspects of the phonological representation of the sentence: intonation, phrasal rhythmic patterning, and prosodic phrasing. This article examines the relations between these aspects of sentence prosody as well as the relation of sentence prosody to the meaning of the sentence. Drawing on earlier work by Schmerling (1976), Gussenhoven (1984), Selkirk (1984), and Rochemont (1986) on the relation between intonation and meaning, I intend to show that the distribution of intonational pitch accents in the sentence in English directly constrains the focus structure of the sentence, which in turn constrains the range of meanings available for the sentence (section 1). I will also argue that the distribution of pitch accents places constraints on the possible rhythmic stress patterns of a sentence in English (section 2). The view of the organization of the grammar of English that emerges is one that gives the tonal representation of the sentence - its intonation - a pivotal position, crucially mediating the meaning-sentence prosody relation. In so doing it denies to the phrasal stress pattern of the sentence any such central role. The term pitch accent has been used in the description of tone languages in which the distribution of tone within words is highly restricted. For example, in standard Japanese, the paradigm case of a “pitch ... log in or subscribe to read full text