THE INTONATIONAL MARKING OF FOCAL STRUCTURE: WISHFUL THINKING OR HARD FACT?

German is considered to be a language In our study we examined the intona-where the sentences normally have one tional form of four types of focus struc-prominent part (place of focal accent) ture realized in two question (Q) types which is marked by intonational means. (declarative and inversion Q) and in two In this paper, we will address the ques- non-question (NQ) types (declarative and tion whether more special structures imperative sentence). The material con-like double focus vs. single focus or sists of 3 different A.c.I.-constructions narrow focus vs. broad focus (focus with a dependent transitive verb. Six projection) are marked by intonational untrained speakers (3 male, 3 female) means as well or whether they simply produced a total of 360 sentences toge-have to be extracted out of the linguis- ther with context sentences, which in-tic context. duced sentence modality, focal structure and thereby the FA. The intended FA in1. INTRODUCTION the embedded sentence can be on theThe linguistic concept of focussing 2nd phrase (2PHR), the 3rd phrase concerns an aspect of the semantic (3PHR) or on both phrases (2/3PHR); cf. structure of sentences. Sentences can be table 1.divided into a focus component and a In this paper we want to address th