What is emphasis and how is it coded

The meaning category emphasis is examined with regard to its semantic, pragmatic, and affective components and their pro-sodic coding in German, English, and Dutch. In particular, a distinction is made between emphasis for focus, which singles out elements of discourse by making them more salient than others, and emphasis for intensity, which intensifies the mean-ing contained in the elements. To evaluate intensity negatively a force accent comes into play, which is signalled by non-pitch features. The question of universals is also addressed. Sound illustrations may be found in [19]. 1