Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:30:39.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An intonational grammar for Icelandic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2009

Nicole Dehé
Nicole Dehé*
Affiliation:
Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Englische Philologie, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany. [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the tonal grammar of Icelandic and to complement the tone inventory as previously described in the literature (Árnason 1998). Specifically, types of pitch accents and edge tones and their combinations in neutral declaratives and questions, and in utterances containing narrow focus are addressed. Two pitch accent types (H* and L*) and two edge tones (H- and L-) are identified, for which evidence has not been found in previous research. Moreover, the paper shows for declaratives, that along with downstep, Icelandic has upstep across Intonational Phrases. Upstep applies to a series of pitch peaks. It may occur in neutral declaratives and in utterances with final narrow focus. Overall, the results of this study provide a substantial addition to our knowledge of Icelandic intonational phonology.

Keywords

downstepedge tonesfocusIcelandicIcelandic intonational phonologypitch accentsupstep
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , June 2009 , pp. 5 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allerton, D. J. 1978. The notion of ‘givenness’ and its relations to presupposition and to theme. Lingua 44, 133–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Árnason, Kristján. 1985. Icelandic word stress and metrical phonology. Studia Linguistica 39, 93–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Árnason, Kristján. 1987. The stress of prefixes and suffixes in Icelandic. In Gregersen, Kirsten & Basbøll, Hans (eds.), Nordic Prosody IV: Papers from a Symposium, 137–146. Odense: Odense University Press.Google Scholar
Árnason, Kristján. 1998. Toward an analysis of Icelandic intonation. In Werner, Stefan (ed.), Nordic Prosody: 7th Conference, Joensuu 1996, 49–62. Frankfurt, Berlin & New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Baumann, Stefan & Grice, Martine. 2006. The intonation of accessibility. Journal of Pragmatics 38, 1636–1657.Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary & Elam, Gayle A.. 1997. Guidelines for ToBI labelling; version 3.0. http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~tobi/ame_tobi/ (27 August 2008).Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary & Pierrehumbert, Janet. 1986. Intonational structure in Japanese and English. Phonology Yearbook 3, 255–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul. 2001. PRAAT: A system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International 5 (9–10), 341–347.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2008. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.0.04) [Computer program]. http://www.praat.org/ (10 February 2008).Google Scholar
Cruttenden, Alan. 1993. The de-accenting and re-accenting of repeated lexical items. Working Papers 41 (Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, Lund, Sweden) [Proceedings of an ESCA Workshop on Prosody, 27–29 September 1993, Lund], 16–19.Google Scholar
Deemter, Kees van. 1999. Contrastive stress, contrariety, and focus. In Bosch, Peter & van der Sandt, Rob (eds.), Focus: Linguistic, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives, 3–17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dehé, Nicole. 2006. Some notes on the focus–prosody relation and phrasing in Icelandic. In Bruce, Gösta & Horne, Merle (eds.), Nordic Prosody: 9th Conference, Lund 2004, 47–56. Frankfurt, Berlin & New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Dehé, Nicole. 2008. To delete or not to delete: The contexts of Icelandic final vowel deletion. Lingua 118 (5), 732–753.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Einarsson, Stefán. 1973. Icelandic: Grammar, Texts, Glossary (2nd edn.). Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline. 1993. German Intonational Patterns (Linguistische Arbeiten 285). Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gårding, Eva. 1998. Intonation in Swedish. In Hirst, Daniel & Christo, Albert Di (eds.), Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages, 112–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grice, Martine & Baumann, Stefan. 2002. Deutsche Intonation und GToBI. Linguistische Berichte 191, 267–298.Google Scholar
Grice, Martine, Baumann, Stefan & Benzmüller, Ralf. 2005. German intonation in autosegmental-metrical phonology. In Sun-Ah Jun, Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing, 55–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice Martine, D., Ladd, Robert & Arvaniti, Amalia. 2000. On the place of phrase accents in intonational phonology. Phonology 17 (2), 143–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 1984. Stress shift and the nucleus. In Carlos Gussenhoven, On the Grammar and Semantics of Sentence Accents, 291–332. Dordrecht: Foris. [Also published in Linguistics 21(1983), 303–339.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2004. The Phonology of Tone and Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, Bruce & Lahiri, Aditi. 1991. Bengali intonational phonology. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 9, 47–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellmuth, Sam. 2005. No de-accenting in (or of) phrases: Evidence from Arabic for cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal prosodic variation. In Frota, Sónia, Vigario, Marina & Freitas, Maria J. (eds.), Prosodies: With Special Reference to Iberian Languages, 99–112. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellmuth, Sam. 2006. Intonational Pitch Accent Distribution in Egyptian Arabic. Ph.D. dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.Google Scholar
Iivonen, Antti. 1998. Intonation in Finnish. In Hirst, Daniel & Cristo, Albert Di (eds.), Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages, 311–327. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jóhannsson, Jóhannes L. L. 1924. Nokkrar sögulegar athuganir um helztu hljóðbreztingar o. fl. í íslenzku. Reykjavik: Bókaverzlun Sigfúsar Eymundssonar.Google Scholar
Kanerva, Jonni M. 1990. Focusing on phonological phrases in Chicheŵa. In Inkelas, Sharon & Zec, Draga (eds.), The Phonology–Syntax Connection, 145–161. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kristoffersen, Gjert. 2000. The Phonology of Norwegian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 1980. The Structure of Intonational Meaning: Evidence from English. Bloomington, IN & London: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 1983. Phonological features of intonational peaks. Language 59 (4), 721–759.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 1996. Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Focus: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leben, William. 1973. Suprasegmental Phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John J. 1986. OCP effects: Gemination and antigemination. Linguistic Inquiry 17 (2), 207–263.Google Scholar
Nolan, Francis & Jónsdóttir, Hildur. 2001. Accentuation patterns in Icelandic. In van Dommelen, Wim A. & Fretheim, Thorstein (eds.), Nordic Prosody: 8th Conference, Trondheim 2000, 187–198. Frankfurt, Berlin & New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet. 1980. The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet & Hirschberg, Julia. 1990. The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse. In Cohen, Philip R., Morgan, Jerry & Pollack, Martha E. (eds.), Intentions in Communication, 271–311. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thráinsson, Höskuldur. 1994. Icelandic. In König, Ekkehard & van der Auwera, Johan (eds.), The Germanic Languages, 142–189. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar