Prosodic Realization of Topics

This paper presents the results of a pilot study aiming to investigate the prosodic realization of topichood in Greek, focusing particularly on the realization of different types of topics. Topic-less sentences, “simple”, contrastive and corrective topics were compared through controlled data collection on the basis of both phonological and phonetic criteria. Analysis showed that only corrective topics bear distinct phonological (L+H* pitch accent) and phonetic (increased F0, duration and intensity) correlates. Having ascribed this distinct prosodic marking to a contrast feature operating within the topic rather than the topic itself, we consider the above results as evidence supporting the claim that topichood is not reflected on prosody at least with regards to pitch accent type and the phonetic parameters assessed