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This chapter identifies a tight relation between information structure prominence, in terms of focus, and prosodic prominence, in terms of accent. This is done by way of a detailed analysis of second occurrence focus (SOF), a phenomenon that has drawn the attention of semanticists and phonologists only in recent years. There are parallels between the semantics and phonology which can be captured by means of two generalizations. The first one is Stress F, which posits that a pitch accent must be placed somewhere in the prosodic domain of the focus constituent. The second one, called Relativized Stress F, establishes a hierarchy between two bound foci with overlapping or embedding domains. The focus with higher semantic scope is prosodically more prominent than the focus with lower scope. The effects of both constraints can be captured in a strictly local fashion by the introduction of operators that operate as modifiers on semantic combination functions, such as Functional Application. These modifiers pass the information of semantic and prosodic prominence up the syntactic tree. Thus, the chapter, despite its strong semantic bias, relates the semantic interpretation of focus to the prosody, mediated by the syntax.

In many languages vowel insertion gives rise to opaque stress patterns. This chapter provides arguments, based on examination of loanwords in Selayarese and North Kyungsang Korean and native vocabulary in Winnebago and Iraqi Arabic, that this opacity is due either to avoidance of epenthetic material in prominent positions, or to maximization of paradigmatic contrasts.

This chapter looks at several important trends concerning religious leaders. Religious leadership is a less attractive career choice for young people than it used to be. The numbers of older clergy and of female clergy are higher than they were several decades ago. Moreover, public confidence in religious leaders has declined precipitously. Public confidence in other kinds of leaders has declined as well, but confidence in religious leaders has declined more than confidence in leaders of other institutions. All things considered, religious leaders have lost ground on several fronts in recent decades when it comes to its reputation and social prominence.

This chapter discusses the consideration of multiple identities that people have and that exist in situated interaction. It considers the case of multiple identities within a person, and then examines multiple identities within a situation. It also shows that the perceptual emphasis in identity theory conceptualizes identities as hierarchically arranged in a control system of identities instead of a prominence hierarchy.

This chapter proposes a model of prosodic typology based on categories of intonation and phrasing, analyzed in the framework of autosegmental-metrical (AM) phonology of intonation. To do this, it examines the ToBI systems and intonational structures of twenty-one languages described in the AM model: thirteen languages in the book and eight languages published elsewhere. The prosodic similarities and differences across these languages are captured by two prosodic categories — prominence and rhythmic/prosodic unit — with each category being further divided into lexical and postlexical levels. It shows that the traditional typology based on the realization of suprasegmental features such as tone, stress, and pitch accent is not ideal for studying prosodic typology. The chapter further discusses the flexibility and extensions of ToBI system.

An expression's meaning depends not only on the conceptual content it evokes but also on the construal it imposes on that content. Broad classes of construal phenomena include specificity, focusing, prominence, and perspective. Specificity (or its inverse, schematicity) is the degree of precision and detail at which a situation is characterized. One kind of focusing involves various kinds of organization into foreground vs. background, such as given vs. new in a discourse, or the asymmetry in complex expressions between component elements and the composite whole (the expression's compositional path). Another dimension of focusing is organization in terms of maximal scope (the full range of content an expression evokes), immediate scope (the general locus of attention), and profile (the specific focus of attention). Focusing is a kind of prominence, of which there are many sorts. Two are especially revelevant for grammar: profiling, a matter of what an expression designates (refers to); and trajector vs. landmark, the first and second most prominent participants in a profiled relationship. Subsumed under perspective are the overall viewing arrangement, vantage point, the viewing asymmetry between the subject and object of conception, and the time course of conception (sequence of mental access). Descriptive notions are supported by converging evidence from three sources: what is known independently about cognition; what is needed for viable semantic description; and utility in an optimal account of grammar. Varied evidence can be brought to bear on particular semantic descriptions, including paths of grammaticization and predictions concerning distribution and judgments of well-formedness.

This case focused entirely on the warning label on the package insert of a tampons product used by a young woman who subsequently suffered from toxic shock syndrome (TSS). One side of the tightly folded insert contained instructions about how to use the product. The other side was labeled “Important Information About Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS).” The “Important Information” side was compared with the Federal Drug Administration's guidelines for wording on tampon packages and inserts, focusing on the speech acts of warning and on the discourse requirements of prominence and legibility. Linguistic analysis was made concerning the semantics of “association,” “attention,” “alert,” and “warning”; the discourse analysis of topic; topic sequencing; the application of Grice's maxims of quantity, relation, and manner; and the importance of directness rather than indirectness in communications of this type, including an analysis of the lack of prominence and effective document design.

This chapter discusses the rise of to-infinitival Exceptional Case-Marking (ECM) constructions as in, He believes the results to be unscientific, in late Middle English. It argues that a distinction should be made between the construction after verbs like want (I want you to do it), which appears to arise out of a reanalysis of the to-infinitive as THEME with verbs of commanding and permitting, and the construction after verbs like believe (‘the verbs of thinking and declaring’). It is argued that emergence of ECMs with believe-verbs is connected with changes in information structure causes by the loss of verb-second. The register restriction on this type of ECM, as well as the restriction on embedded subjects (witness *They alleged the results to be unscientific), appears to suggest that the construction is still outside the core grammar of English and requires additional routines (viruses) that are acquired after the core grammar is in place.

This chapter presents an account of an unexpected victim of both the rise of the to-infinitive and the loss of verb-second: the ‘ultra-indefinite’ pronoun man. Two factors almost completely destroyed the niche occupied by man in Old English. With to-infinitive clauses increasing at the expense of finite embedded clauses, the frequency of man, as the subject of those finite clauses also decreases, its function taken over by its non-overt counterpart, arbitrary PRO. The second factor is the loss of verb-second, which affected the information structure of the clause and promoted the use of various passive constructions over the use of an active construction with a man subject. Subjects came to play a far more prominent role in maintaining textual cohesion. This left little scope for the indefinite pronoun man, whose main role had been to provide a contentless subject, functionally equivalent to a passive.

A controversy emerged from allegedly defamatory articles in the local newspaper about a teacher whose students were said to “have learned nothing” during the school year, requiring them to take summer classes to make up for their deficiencies. Linguistic analysis of these articles demonstrated that the writers were not giving their opinions, as the newspaper claimed, but instead were offering their articles as factual. The teacher was declared a pubic person by the Court, meaning that she had to prove actual malice in the articles. Negative prominence of the repeated use of “learned nothing” provided such evidence. It was also clear from the articles and press releases that no apology or retraction was given by the defendants.

This chapter discusses several phonological accounts of sentential stress, according to which some language-specific phonological rule determines which word receives the highest prominence in the sentence. It provides several conceptual and empirical arguments against these accounts.

This chapter points out certain characteristics that differentiate between first and second person pronouns. These characteristics derive from the prominence of the speaker (as in making statements or giving orders) or of the addressee (as in asking questions). These and certain other characteristics that derive from the association of personal pronouns with their referents appear to conflict with their other characteristics.

This chapter provides an assessment of the analysis of intonational prominence (pitch accents) in varieties of Swedish. The starting point is prosodic typology for Swedish dialects. Two hierarchical levels of intonational prominence is relevant in Swedish: accent (non-focal accent) and focus (focal accent). Under each higher level of prominence, a word form has either of the two word accents, accent I and accent II. Three general features of the typology are given. The first is the timing of pitch accent gestures. Phonological and phonetic aspects of pitch accent timing as well as more specific details of the pitch characteristics of accent I are discussed. The two other features of the typology concern the pitch realization of focus and the pitch patterns of compound words. A synthesis of model parameters is presented by simulating the different dialect types using resynthesis of intonation.

This chapter comments on the discussion in Chapter 2. It situates the Fabb–Halle approach within the wider context of metrical stress theory and within linguistics more broadly, while responding to some of the specific claims made in Chapter 2. Taking this broader perspective makes possible an appreciation of the differences between the Fabb–Halle approach to metrical stress theory and other approaches within the same theoretical framework. The chapter is organized as follows. First, it describes metrical stress theory and how it has evolved over the years. Second, it reviews claims made in Chapter 2 and evaluates whether this approach provides a reasonable and better description of basic similarities between music and language than other approaches, such as those made by Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983). Third, it addresses the descriptive versus explanatory adequacy of the theory, with particular emphasis on the question of whether the theory affords an explanation of the various patterns of prosodic prominence and grouping associated with the world's linguistic prosodic systems. Finally, it considers an alternative approach that seeks a perceptual basis for commonalities between music and language.

This chapter adds further comments on the discussion in Chapter 2. Fabb and Halle argue that word stress as well as metre in verse and music are all governed by the same computational principle, which groups elements into the hierarchical pattern of the metrical grid. In language, the principle accounts for differences in prominence between syllables, explaining the pattern of stresses in words by means of a combination of rules for grid-building and prominence-assignment. In poetry, it accounts for length restrictions and the placement of marked syllables in metrical grids, and in music, the grouping of timing slots in the metrical grid accounts for its beat pattern. This implies that the parallels between language, poetry, and music run much deeper than has so far been suggested, which tallies with recent claims that different forms of temporally ordered human behaviour all show strong parallels in the way in which they are structured, reflecting the sharing of cognitive and neural resources. However, the grid does not suffice to account for prominence distribution in language. This chapter argues that the stress-assignment rules of French are very different from those of English, and they point to a different weighting of prosodic constraints, leading to cross-linguistic variation. It suggests that a prosodic hierarchy needs to be added to Fabb and Halle's metrical constraints.

Null-subject structures were discussed in Chapter 3 under the heading of syntax. However, one of the puzzles that needs to be dealt with is why null-subject sentences are acceptable in Singapore English but not in British or American English even though all these varieties have a similar system of present-tense verbal inflections. Topic prominence was suggested as having an influence on this. The fronting of a topic belongs within the realm of discourse, because it involves manipulating word order to present ideas in a certain way, which is discussed in this chapter. After the discussion of topic prominence, the use of resumptive pronouns, tolerance for repetition of words, and the ubiquitous occurrence of discourse particles such as lah, ah and yah are considered. The chapter then proceeds to deal with individual words — those that are unique to Singapore English as a result of borrowing, compounding, or the use of abbreviations, and also those that are found in other varieties of English but are used in a different way in Singapore.

Arriving in Kentucky in 1797 Henry Clay brought a burning ambition not only for political and economic success but to create a prominent family. His goals comingled in his marriage to Lucretia Hart, the daughter of one of Kentucky's most successful men. More business arrangement than romance in the early years, the marriage brought lucrative opportunities in law and business. With a traditional view of marriage, Lucretia began immediately to birth children and Henry built his legal career, a political base, and an estate, Ashland, which would nurture both his career and family prominence. Lucretia, preferring a quiet, domestic life and a polar opposite to the high-spirited, impulsive, and charismatic Henry, has been seen as a detriment to Clay's political career. This chapter argues that she was a traditional wife and a dutiful helpmate.

This chapter discusses the events that shaped Henry Watterson's political outlook. Despite having only four years of schooling, he imbibed the politics of the late Jacksonian era; his grandfather had served under Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812. It was Henry's father, Harvey Watterson, who passed on his political sangfroid to his son. Thanks to Henry's impeccable political credentials and a remarkable set of connections, he was able to rise to political and journalistic prominence at a young age.