J. Linguistics 21 (1985), 125-138. Printed in Great Britain
Two views of accent: a reply
CARLOS GUSSENHOVEN
Instituut Engels-Amerikaans, University of Nijmegen
(Received 20 September 1984)
1. I N T R O D U C T I O N
Bolinger (1972) argued against the notion that the occurrence of sentence
accents can be explained on the basis of syntactic structure, a position taken
by, among others, Chomsky & Halle (1968) and Bresnan (1971,1972), at least
with regard to a (putative) corpus of sentences with 'normal intonation'.
Bolinger's chief argument against this 'syntactic' position was his richly
supported observation that sentence accents function independently as
markers of information content, and that therefore an approach that derives
them from anything other than the intention of the speaker is misguided.
In my own approach to the description of the position of sentence accents
the view that sentence accents are the expression of the speaker's communicative intentions is fully endorsed. The issue in 'Two views of accent' (above,
pp. 79-123) is no longer whether sentence accents are derived from syntax,
but to what extent the particular word that a sentence accent is placed on
is the unit on which these communicative intentions focus. For Bolinger the
relation is direct: 'accents mark individual words focused for their informativeness', where 'informativeness' is subordinate to 'interest', which in
turn shares with 'power' the assignment of accent. In his article, Bolinger
criticises an alternative approach exemplified in Gussenhoven (1983) in which
the relation is indirect.1 In this approach, which builds on work by Schmerling
(1976), Ladd (1980) and others, the speaker is assumed to translate his
communicative intensions into choices from a number of linguistic options,
most importantly into a focus marking of the semantic constituents in his
sentence (fragment). Sentence accent assignment rules translate these choices
(again, mainly the focus marking) into sentence accents on particular words.
I will adopt the term 'highlighting' for the former approach, and will refer
to the latter as the 'focus-to-accent' approach.
Before proceeding further, it should be stressed that the 'determinism'
referred to by Bolinger on p. 79 applies to the relation between linguistic
[1] I would like to thank Dwight Bolinger for correcting an earlier version of this reply on
a number of points. I avail myself of this opportunity to correct three errors in my article.
First, on p. 392, ACP in (34b) should read ACP. Second, in line 6 on p. 391 ('despite the
fact that the comment comes last') for comment read topic. Third, Kraak points out to
me that (53) on p. 395 would in his account be analysed as a full-focus sentence. While
this means that my own and Kraak's focus-analysis of (52H53) a r e fu"y m accordance,
my objection to Kraak's claim that the difference between these two prosodic structures
can be explained on the basis of the semantics of the adjectives ([+inherent property])
remains unaffected.
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CARLOS GUSSENHOVEN
options and surface form (the distribution of accents). In particular, no
determinism is claimed to exist between linguistic/pragmatic context and the
way speakers address the linguistic options. The difference between these
two relations can be illustrated with the side issue of the semantics of the
nuclear tones, taken up by Bolinger in B (46). Bolinger's criticism is that to the
question 'Anything new?' the reply The "HOUSE is on fire. But who gives
a damn? seems perfectly well-formed in spite of the fact that the fall-rise was
claimed to mean 'selection from Background'. Here, the criticism rests on
the assumption - valid, of course, under the 'highlighting' view-that the
relation between pragmatic conditions and surface form is direct. My
interpretation of B (46) is that the speaker uses the manipulation 'selection
from Background' (= fall-rise) facetiously. He pretends that the burning
house is an everyday sort of occurrence and could as such have been known
to the hearer. I think it is precisely this meaning of the tone that causes the
reply to sound so incongruously casual.
A further preliminary remark is in order here to emphasize the difference
between the two approaches. In my article, I used the term 'nucleus' rather
than 'sentence accent', as it seemed the usual term in the British English
literature for the phenomenon the article was concerned with. The choice of
term was perhaps unfortunate, since 'nucleus' has certain overtones of'most
important', 'centre of the intonation contour' etc., none of which the term
was intended to imply: it was simply used in the sense of' last accent of the
tone group'. Of course, intonation contours often do contain a most
prominent accent, a 'centre of communicative dynamism' in Bolinger's
words, and degrees of prominence can often easily be detected. The highlighting view, concentrating as it does on the speaker's motivation for his
prosodic treatment of a word, can discuss the presence of a sentence accent
as well as its degree of general emphasis 'at one go', since concepts like
'upplaying' and 'downplaying' can be brought to bear on both these aspects
of accentuation. In the more structurally oriented focus-to-accent view the
two issues must needs be kept separate (unless 'degrees of focus' are
introduced, a self-defeating sort of move in a description that seeks to
separate linguistic options from the variety of pragmatic conditions that
prompt speakers to address them). Thus, this reply is only concerned with
the presence vs absence of sentence accents, the assumption being that the
general prominence with which they are produced is the result of the
employment of the separate linguistic variable 'range'.
There are, it would seem, two possible arguments for rejecting the direct
'highlighting' view. It could be the case that the relation between focus and
accent is demonstrably indirect, either because words can be focused but not
accented, or that words can be accented but not be in focus. Second, it could
be the case that the syntactic surface form of sentences is dependent on the
same linguistic options that sentence accents are governed by. The force of
the argument here rests on the undesirability of the resultant duplication in
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TWO VIEWS OF ACCENT - A REPLY
the description: if the syntactic surface form is derived from those options,
it would be uneconomical not to use them to generate the prosodic surface
form as well. I will try to exploit both arguments here. Some discrepancies
between focus and accent are discussed in Section 3. There I will also reply
to some of the criticism levelled by Bolinger against the 'focus-to-accent'
approach. The other argument is used in Section 2, which notes two cases
of 'prosodic' options determining syntactic surface form.
2.
'FOCUS-TO-SYNTAX'
2.1. The first example concerns the status of Arguments and destination
adjuncts: my SAAR (Sentence Accent Assignment Rule) treats both as
merging constituents. Interestingly, both are treated as integrative parts of
the sentence by Dutch syntax. Recall that focus domains may consist of a
Predicate and an object (PA), but also of a Predicate and a destination adjunct
(Gussenhoven, 1983: 401). Examples from Dutch are given in (1) and (2)
respectively, where the subject is [ — focus].
(1)
(2)
Hij heeft een BOEKenbon gewonnen (He has a book-token won)
Hij is naar ZWEden gefietst (He has to Sweden cycled)
These contrast with combinations of Predicates + Conditions, which, by
SAAR, require an accent on each constituent if both are focus, as in (3).
(3)
Hij heeft in Zweden geFIETST (He has in Sweden cycled)
The obligatory Dutch rule of verb-final placement, which moves the VP minus
the finite verb to final position in main clauses, may ignore Conditions (i.e.
may place the operator-less VP before or after such adverbials), but not the
merging constituents of (1) and (2): (6) is well-formed, but (4) and (5) are
not.
(4)
(5)
(6)
*Hij heeft gewonnen een BOEkenbon
*Hij is gefietst naar ZWEden
Hij heeft gefietst in ZWEden
Ton Broeders (personal communication) has suggested that it may in fact
be desirable to consider destination adjuncts to be functionally Arguments
(' to be-cycle Sweden'), which would cause the exceptional status of destination
adjuncts (adverbials, but not Conditions) to disappear. Here, we may also
think of the contrast met zijn ZOONtje aan't spelen/to be out playing with
his SON ( = 'to be-play his son') and met zijn zoontje VISsen/to have gone
fishing with his SON ( ^ ' to be-fish his son'). Predictably, we could have met
zijn zoontje VISsen or vissen met zijn ZOONtje, but met zijn ZOONtje
aan het spelen cannot be so treated. Hij is aan het spelen met zijn ZOONtje
naturally requires an accent on spelen, and we get the childish father
interpretation again (or one of Bolinger's alternative interpretations). We
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CARLOS GUSSENHOVEN
seem to have a non-trivial case here of a prosodic rule and a syntactic rule
referring to the same categories.2
2.2. The second case concerns the position of focus-governing morphemes.
As is well-known, the position of words like even, also, only is sensitive to
focus structure (e.g. Quirk et al., 1972: 433; also Ladd, 1983, and personal
communication). Thus, (7), where 'John' is focus, is fine, but (8), in which
'went to that party' is focus, is not. {Only is not meant to be a sentence
conjunct here.)
(7)
(8)
Only JOHN went to that party
*Only John went to that PARty
Even and only are interesting, since they would appear to be able to occur
both before and after a focused Argument (though preferences for particular
positions will exist). If either of these is placed immediately before an
Argument, the Argument cannot be made to share a focus domain with a
Predicate. Thus, in (9) and (10) the accented Arguments are unambiguously
the only focused constituents. In. (11) and (12), by contrast, the focus
distribution is ambiguous: either the accented Arguments are in focus, as in
(9) and (10), or the Argument + Predicate combinations.
(9) He stole only CANdies
(10) Even JOHN'S been arrested
(11) He only stole CANdies
(12) JOHN'S even been arrested
If we say that the accents on candies in (9) and (11) are there because of the
communicative import of 'candies', we are stuck: why can't we have the
following? Thafs heavy stuff, Sarge: burglary, battery and assault.. .Are you
sure ? * The kid says he stole only some CANdy. (Cf. the possible He's never
really stolen anything of value, Henry. When he was with us, he stole only
CANdies.) There is no accounting for this if we do not admit that the
communicative import of'steal' is somehow relevant. As we cannot say that
'steal' is focused under the highlighting hypothesis, we are forced into the
awkward situation of finding that the position of focus-governing morphemes
is sensitive to focus ( = accent, cf. (7) and (8)), as well as to semantic aspects
that are very similar to focus, but are nevertheless something else.
In addition to these two cases, there is the Dutch er-inversion rule, which
was shown to be sensitive to [±eventive] (Gussenhoven, 1983: 404), and the
case of the Dutch auxiliary of the perfect with verbs of motion, which is
hebben if the sentence does not contain a destination adjunct, but zijn if it
[2] I fully agree with Bolinger here that it is the word order that causes the superficial difference
between is out fishing with his SON and is met zijn zoontje VISsen (Bolinger, p. 119). SA \ R
works for Dutch as well as for English. In my article I should have marked the examples
as I have done here.
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does (Gussenhoven, 1983: 401). Such data suggest that an approach whereby
prosodic structure is seen as the surface manifestation of underlying options,
with rules mediating between the two, is utterly reasonable.
3. N O N - C O R R E S P O N D E N C E S BETWEEN FOCUS AND ACCENT
In this section, three issues are discussed. First, I will defend my analysis of
TOPICALIZATION. Second, some discussion is devoted to Bolinger's
account of accentuation in Subject + Predicate sentences. Third, I will try to
defend the position that there are syntax-independent differences in accent
placement between English and Dutch.
3.1 Topicalization
Bolinger criticizes the topicalization rule on the grounds that, contrary to
what it predicts, topicalized elements need not be accented. The data are clear:
B (3)-(6). Observe that these data constitute a subclass of topicalized
sentences: those where the topicalized element is a repetition of a preceding
word. For this special case, a special description would seem to be called for.
Bolinger himself refers to Brazil, Coulthard & Johns (1980), who give as the
meaning of low key the 'equative' nature of the tone unit. If the tone unit
is here taken to be the domain assigned to the topicalized element these
examples are equative par excellence. According to Brazil, the ' key' option
is available at the (first) accented syllable of the tone unit. Hence, we may
assume that the topicalized element is here assigned a (very) low-key level
tone. That this is not an unreasonable analysis is suggested by (13), where
them obligatorily has the form /Sem/ and is pronounced long at that,
phonetic features that otherwise accompany accented them.
(13)
John died a bachelor. Mind you, in the village he lived in he only
had Sue and Sally Baker to choose from
and them he wouldn't
look l
c
„
t.
Topicalization not only requires the topicalized element to be accented, but
also awards it a focus domain to itself. Abandoning the rule, therefore, would
mean that we no longer have an explanation for why like in (14) is felt to
be [ — focus], while died in (15) could be either [ + focus] or [—focus], both
facts which follow from SAAR and TOPICALIZATION.
(14) JOHN I like
(15) JOHN died
In Dutch, objects are freely topicalized. Example (16), where die pet is a
topicalized direct object, fits naturally in a conversation about hanging things
on hatstands, but it is odd as a news sentence. By contrast, (17), where die
5
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LIN 21
CARLOS GUSSENHOVEN
pet is not topicalized, is perfectly natural as a news sentence. That is, the
Predicate aan de kapstok hangen is obligatorily [ — focus] in (16), but not in
(17). If TOPICALIZATION is indeed shared by both English and Dutch,
this intuition should be discernible by speakers of English.
(16)
(17)
Die PET moet je aan de kapstok hangen
that cap must you on the hatstand hang
Je moet die PET aan de kapstok hangen
It will be clear that such data (cf. also Kraak, 1970, where they are given, but
not accounted for) cannot be adequately explained under highlighting.
3.2 SAAR
Much of Bolinger's discussion bears on the accentuation in subject + predicate
sentences of the type JOHNson's died (Schmerling, 1976). Given the requirements of the highlighting approach, he arrives at a different explanation of
why died typically remains unaccented even if the sentence is' out of the blue':
the predicate remains unaccented because it is ' downplayed' relative to the
subject, which is 'upplayed', a situation that is particularly likely if the
utterance is short. A corollary of the downplaying may be a note of
callousness, introduced because the speaker is apparently not bothering to
give the other accent. Another concept that is invoked is the' emblematic '-ness
of the subject: in such sentences the most important or specific information
is already encoded in the subject, the information load of the predicate being
relatively subsidiary. Here we might think of JOHNson died given as an
explanation of some sort ('Why is the flag flying at half-mast?'-'It's
because of JOHNson'). Both explanations come under a more general notion
of communicative weight divided over the two scales of a balance, one for
the subject and one for the predicate. One cannot, clearly, deny that
Bolinger's description succeeds in pinning down a sizeable portion of the
motivation for and the communicative effects of these accentuation patterns.
At the same time, there are certain irregularities. There is a clear case of
lopsidedness: the subject/object scale is apparently heavier than the predicate
scale. Fuchs (1984) notes that My purse has GONE is a perfectly natural
answer to Where's your PURSE?, but not to Whafs UP?. The likely - if
unexpressed - reaction here is, as Fuchs notes, 'Who's been talking about
purses?' Economy of utterance should presumably apply to both replies, but
there seems nothing odd about accenting purse in addition to gone in the first
example, while accenting gone in addition to purse in the second is out. Why
is the balance right in the first, and wrong in the second? Under the
focus-to-accent approach, the second example is of course straightforward.
The first can be explained if we allow pre-nuclear [—focus] constituents to
be given pre-nuclear accents, by way of optional, secondary operation. This
fairly commonplace situation is also illustrated in Selkirk's (1984: 229)
examples (18) and (19).
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(18)
(19)
Er hatte diese MORALVORSTELLUNGEN INTERNALISIERT
he had these moral-ideas internalised
Er hatte die SELTSAMSTEN MORALVORSTELLUNGEN
internalisiert
he had the rarest moral-ideas internalised
In (18) internalisiert is [ + focus], and accented. Diese Moralvorstellungen is
clearly a stand-in formulation of concepts that were discussed before this
point in the conversation; it is [—focus] when SAAR applies, and has
subsequently received a pre-nuclear accent. Example (19), however, 'is
reported to be the preferred pronunciation of the sentence when uttered out
of the blue', and here the AP focus domain requires an accent on just the
Argument. Selkirk, for whom these data are problematic, glosses (18) as He
had INTERNALISED
these MORAL IDEAS. However, accenting moral
ideas here changes the impact of the sentence. The German present-tense
equivalent of (18) is Er intemaliSIERT diese Moralvorstellungen, just as when
the first of Fuchs' replies (the one to Where is your PURSE?) is changed into
the poetic Gone is my purse!, it is only gone that receives an accent: if the
word order is reversed, the (previously prenuclear) accent of interest
disappears.3 While the subject bias per se might presumably be explained
under the notion of 'emblematic'-ness (cf. Bolinger p. 000), this ordering
effect is problematic for the highlighting view.
To illustrate the gradual nature of the motivation for subject accentuation
vs. (subject-and-)predicate accentuation Bolinger offers, among other
examples, (B132) (cf. Bolinger p. 101).
Let me first simply duplicate his discussion, but include reference to focus
structure. Examples (a), (b), (c) and (d) would be regarded as having only
mother (maternal) in focus: the concept of somebody or something being at
fault is, as Bolinger says, taken to be Background by the speaker; (e) is a
straightforward full-focus sentence (and could also be scaled higher up?): the
fact that illness was involved is new. (0 is unproblematic in any theory; its
position must be wholly due to the likelihood of getting this sort of one-word
reply; (g), being the least specific reference to indisposition given in the set,
has complaints [—focus]; (h) is interesting because, while the concept of
disease is new, the wording one ofX's numerous Y's suggests that X habitually
has quite a variety of Y's, which fact will surely have come to the addressee's
notice: treating Y as [-I-focus] would dull this effect. Predictably, replacing
it with the straight ailments causes it to drop two positions ((j)), since its
[-focus] status is not similarly reinforced. Nevertheless, compared to
sickness, ailment has a fairly specific ring about it in the sense that the
suggestion is that the nature of the illness is known. (Note that Bolinger's
[3] Selkirk's comment that in (19) 'perhaps focussing the verb (...) would "detract" from
the focus on the N P ' suggests that she does appreciate the difference in status between
the accented Arguments in (18) and (19) noted here.
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CARLOS GUSSENHOVEN
comment 'the most generalized and chronic reference to illness' refers to
frequency of use, not to meaning.) I suspect that My MOTHer's sickness
would have been scaled below (j). Example (i), with the nominalized predicate
(not a 'Predicate': it must be [—focus]), is rated above (j); for reasons that
are not clear to me, this way of putting things (as opposed to the simple noun
sickness) does seem to suggest prior knowledge of the mother's sickness (is
there an echo of What with my mother being sick an' alH). Example (k) is a
full-focus sentence again, like (e), but is clearly a less likely sort of excuse
('Does that mean you NEVER go out at night?'); (1) is less acceptable than
(k) because it is an Argument: one would expect full focus and an accent on
the last word. The fact that it is marked ? rather than * is probably because
it capitalizes on the fact that epilepsy is a chronic disease: one can easily ' get'
a [—focus] reading if we suppose the speaker to be intermittently tied up
because of it and his social entourage to know about this. Examples (m) and
(n) are structurally identical to (k) and (1), and hence ordered the way they
are. As a pair they rate below these, because either version of the pair (m)-( n )
is an inappropriately casual way of putting things: one would expect an
introductory phrase or two, to cushion the impact. Given full focus for both,
however, I would say that (m) is linguistically well-formed and (n) is not.
The fact that conditions in the world may obtain so as to have a graded
impact on the forms speakers use is not, of course, Bolinger's point, which
is rather that there is no need to introduce a distinction between [+focus]
predicates and [ — focus] ones, since both come out unaccented anyway. The
conditions obtaining in the world range right through the distinction, and the
only relevant boundary line is between those causing speakers to accent and
those that do not. But note that Bolinger's account does not explain the
ordering of (k) and (1), or that of (m) and (n) (Why does his comment that
(1) and (n) are 'bad in part because... they overtly assume knowledge' NOT
apply to (k) and (m)?). Moreover, it is somewhat less than satisfactory to
ignore the intuitive existence of a dichotomy between (e), where the intuition shared by Bolinger in his discussion - is clearly that' be ill' is new information,
and, say, (a), where 'be X's fault' is not. The same remark could be made
about the two answers (Bolinger's examples) to What has SHE come to us
for?, viz. It's her HUSband's fault and Her HUSband beats her/has been
arrested again, where the second is in every way comparable to Bolinger
(i32e): the concept of 'somebody's fault' again is implicit in the question,
but this is not true for the nature of the cause. The effect of structure can
be seen when we compare, for instance, She's MARRied to a wife-batterer and
Her HUSband is a wife-batterer. If we accent just married in the first reply,
we cannot get away from some such interpretation as 'we must have been
talking about wife-battering'. But if we accent only husband, we are free to
intp-.pret the Predicate as [+focus] and may only wonder why the speaker
is so casual as to use a single focus domain for this relatively dramatic
proposition. This 'casualness' interpretation is not, however, available for the
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TWO VIEWS OF ACCENT-A REPLY
first reply, a fact that SAAR accounts for. Bolinger offers (148-149), reproduced here as ( 2 0 H 2 1 ) , a s a further counter-example to SAAR. They are
replies to 'Why didn't you buy that second-hand s u i t ? - It looked all right
to me'. Bolinger comments that the important point is '(there is something
wrong with) the trousers', and structure does not come into play.
(20) The TROUSers were ripped! Didn't you notice?
(21) A rip in the TROUSers! Didn't you notice?
But if we disambiguate the status of in the trousers (Predicate or Condition?)
by saying There was a rip in the trousers, surely there is nothing wrong with
just accenting rip and leaving the Predicate unaccented? Compare the relative
normality of this reply with the relative abnormality of Bolinger (151): The
trousers were RIPPED (marked 'less appropriate' by Bolinger).
In compounds, too, Bolinger argues for a ' highlighting' type of motivation
for accenting one constituent rather than the other. While historically
plausible, his account of how the difference between, say, Kent TERRace
and KENT Street can be looked upon as a fossilization of pragmatically
motivated accentuation behaviour ignores the structural difference between
compounds and phrases. A compound like blackbird can be entirely [ +focus]
with just the accent on black, but the phrase a black bird cannot. In (23) there
is no [+focus] Argument, and domain formation is blocked, while in (22J
the focused Argument readily merges with the Predicate into a single focus
domain. Thus, (22) is well-formed and (23) is not:' who has been talking about
escaping?'.
(22)
(23)
Talking about your birds... The BLACKbird has escaped
Talking about your birds... ? The BLACK bird has escaped
While both in the phrase and in the compound the constituent black is
accented, it only makes sense to say that the phrase constituent bird is
[ — focus].
Another structural claim is spirited away by Bolinger on p. 114, namely
the claim that focus domain formation is blocked by [+focus] Conditions
interposed between Arguments and Predicates. The example was the pair of
full-focus sentences Our DOG's disappeared and Our dog's mysteriously
disapPEARed. He offers Bolinger (195) as a counterexample. But note that
the example unobtrusively sets up the [ — focus] context for 'mysteries': One
thing after another. In (24) it is not so easy.
(24)
On Sunday morning, Major Lefranc decided to march his army
across the frozen inlet to the rebellious north.
(a) Little did he know that the THAW had set in
(b) Little did he know that the thaw had unexpectedly (slowly/long
since/ - Alas! - ) set IN
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CARLOS GUSSENHOVEN
(The same goes for non-restrictive constructions like that wistful minion of
Mother Nature, which had blown across from England on the western winds.)
The point is also that when we DO accent mysteriously in Our dog's
mysteriously disappeared, we cannot leave disappeared unaccented without
making it 'sound' [ — focus]. The difficulty that remains, of course, is, as
Bolinger indicates in his Note 21, to determine just what facilitates
deaccenting the adverbial.
Bolinger also questions the claim that focused pronouns cannot merge
with Arguments into single focus domains. By way of reference points,
consider the following as sequels to Bill and Mary looked hard at the shrubbery
beneath the trees.
(25)
(26)
(27)
Nothing seemed to be MOVing
A FERN seemed to be moving
Something seemed to be MOVing
Note the difference between (25) and (27): the accentuation of Nothing and
the absence of an accent on Something is confirmed by the Dutch Er bewdog
NIETS ('there moved nothing') and Er beWOOG iets. The differences are
accounted for by SAAR: (26) is a full-focus sentence, with AP domain
formation; (25) is similarly [+focus], but has a pronoun for the Argument,
which resists domain formation and therefore (25) has two accents; (27) has
a [ — focus] place-holder for the Argument ('There seemed to be some
moving'). Bolinger questions the claim concerning the special status of
focused pronouns illustrated in (25). First, he gives a counterexample in
which the pronoun is not accented, Bolinger (54). However, the example is
of type (27), where the pronoun is [ — focus]. If it was [ +focus], then, in his
own words, this 'would suggest that seeing people was expected'. Since the
utterance concerned reports the NOT seeing of people, this would be good
enough reason for [+focus], as in (28).
(28)
Reporting back so s o o n ? - Y e p , I haven't seen ANybody (in spite
of what we expected)
What SAAR predicts is the accent for anybody as well as that for seen: the
Dutch equivalent is 3a, ik heb niemandgeZIEN. What it also predicts is that
if the speaker had unexpectedly seen a fearsome Yeti and had explained his
return on that ground, the Predicate would remain unaccented: Oh yeah! Vve
seen a YETH, or in Dutch: Ik heb een YETi gezien!. Why, if all there is is
highlighting? Neither do I feel that the contrast between Everybody has
eSCAPED and The PRIsoners have escaped (Gussenhoven, 35, 36; Bolinger,
49, 52) is adequately explained away by Bolinger. I would maintain that both
are perfectly natural even in a situation where the addressee's sole function
was that of prison warder. Second, he gives a number of counterexamples
to type (25) in which the Predicate is unaccented (Bolinger 53, 55-58). But
surely these are sentences in which the Predicate is [—focus]? Bolinger (55)
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is clearly idiomatic, like YOU had your comeuppance there!. Example Bolinger
(53) would appear to suggest that the speaker would be wholly satisfied if
only the craziness were confined to a subgroup of the party-goers. I think these
are relatively graphic ways of putting things, and it is the [ — focus] treatment
of the Predicate that accounts for this special feature.
Bolinger's discussion of Bolinger (59-73) affords intriguing insights into
what sort of Argument expressions are typically [—focus]. In view of the fact
that the pragmatics evidently play a major determining role here, it is unlikely
that the answer can be couched in linguistic terms. I certainly agree with the
conclusion he reaches after his mock-attempt at a structural approach that
it is not pronoun-ness that accounts for the non-accentuation of Arguments;
however, indefiniteness is not the whole answer either, as definite expressions
like the poor soul, the wretch are similarly treated.
3.3 Minimal focus
I used the term 'minimal focus' in a rather loose sense to cover a variety of
focus distributions for which SAAR is no longer relevant and in which less
than a complete Argument, Predicate or Condition is in focus. Two cases are
interesting, because - the claim was - they point up differences between
Dutch and English in the way the focus is realized. These are (1) polarity focus,
and (2) sentences containing a [—focus] constituent containing a 'nucleus
carrier' (preposition, fo-particle, verb phrase element) preceded by a constituent which is (partly) [+focus]. In (29), there is polarity focus, while in (30)
and (31) the second situation obtains.
(29)
(30)
(31)
A: Did you get the toolbox from the car?
B: It wasn't IN the car
There is of course another aspect TO this problem
Would you refrain from buying it if you were eager TO buy it?
(Bolinger 19a)
Bolinger claims that the differences in accentuation that are observed between
the English sentences and their Dutch equivalents are due to differences in
the syntax or wording between the two languages, such that a word that is
available in one language in unavailable in the other, or not available in the
same position. The effect can be illustrated in English. In the (b)-reply in (32)
the accent does not have a directional preposition to go to: if accentuation
of the verbs is avoided, accentuation of the directional element is possible in
(a), while in (b) the verbal /o-particle is the only other candidate. (Both replies
would be treated as having non-counterassertive polarity focus in the other
approach, with the accent going to the last 'nucleus-carrier'.)
(32)
Don't you ever go and visit your relatives?
a. I have no relatives to go TO
b. I have no relatives TO visit
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CARLOS GUSSENHOVEN
It is not always possible, however, to explain the differences in these terms.
Often, the wording in English is entirely parallel to that in Dutch, but the
accents are on different words all the same. This is for instance the case in
Bolinger (212-213), a non-counterassertive polarity focus, repeated here as
(33)(33)
If the house were on fire...
a. But it ISn't on fire
b. But it isn't ON fire
Bolinger notes that the difference between the Dutch Maar het huis STAAT
niet in brand and the (b)-reply disappears if (a) is substituted for it. While I
grant that my treatment of 'minimal focus' may have unduly concentrated
on what is different at the expense of what is the same, the fact remains that
it is not possible to accent the preposition in Dutch. In the positive case, the
accents are on equivalent words (is - staat). But this is only by virtue of the
fact that is is the only verb phrase element in the sentence and necessarily
corresponds to the Dutch operator. If we take a longer verb phrase, things
are different, as in (34).
(34)
A:
B:
If they are going to cultivate these fields, it would be silly to
mark them 'of special biological interest' in your new Guide
for Ramblers...
As long as I'm on the council, these fields won't BE cultivated!
. . . ZULlen die gronden niet in cultuur worden gebracht
. . . will those fields not in culture be brought
I would maintain that these are equivalent in force. An accent on won't would
make the English reply more matter-of-fact. Accenting worden in the Dutch
example has a similar effect: rather than expressing the speaker's determination
to prevent the break-up of the land, the sentence suggests that the decision
to withhold the permission to cultivate has somehow already been taken. It
would appear that 'highlighting' is up against a case of crossed wires here.
In the positive counterassertive mode, Dutch introduces the affirmative
morpheme wel. If we interpret the difference between the two approaches
strictly, we have here another case of syntax being governed by otherwise
'prosodic' options. To neutralize the difference between, for instance, Het
huis staat WEL in brand and The house IS on fire, Bolinger shows that English,
too, can introduce such morphemes in this type of sentence. However, well
does not have the neutral value that wel has and introduces an element of
probability. Likewise, indeed and too are reinforcing in a way that wel is
not.
In the light of Bolinger's discussion and examples, the formulation of the
Polarity Focus Rule may seem uncomfortably apodictic. For example,
starring (b) in (35) - a reply to Monk Rufus, it says in this report that you watch
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TWO VIEWS OF ACCENT - A REPLY
television - as I did (Gussenhoven 127), is unjustified in that it does seem a
fairly natural sort of reply.
(35)
(a)
(b)
But I DON'T watch television, father
Maar ik KIJK geen televisie!
But I don't WATCH television, father! You know that!
(Bolinger 199)
The question for the 'focus-to-accent' approach is, however, whether we
should regard (a) and (b) as equivalent ways of realizing polarity focus in such
sentences, or whether (b) has a different focus distribution from (a). The
correctness of the second explanation is suggested by (36). Although (35b)
has the accent on an equivalent word to the Dutch translation of (35a),
putting the example in the perfect alters this. The Dutch translation of (36a)
retains the accent on the operator, while the perfective counterpart of (35b)
is surely (36b).
(36)
Monk Rufus, it says in this report that you have watched a lot of
television lately...
(a) But I HAVEn't watched television, father
Maar ik HEB (helemaal) geen televisie gekeken!
(b) But I haven't WATCHED television, father! You know that!
If the focus distribution is assumed to be unaffected by the change in the verbal
aspect, these data would appear to strengthen the' focus-to accent' approach.
In the second type of minimal focus mentioned above, there would appear
to be a clear case of variable realization of the focus in English. While an
important factor in this variation would appear to be style (with 'public
speech' tending to have more instances of late 'nucleus-carrier' stressing),
semantic factors appear to be at play, too, as Bolinger's examples (particularly
Bolinger (i9)-(2o)) demonstrate. Whatever these factors are, however, there
remains the fact that the Dutch equivalents of (30) and (31) have the accent
on the counterparts of another and eager respectively (accentuations that are
also possible in less 'public' English). Two points need to be stressed. First,
accentuation of the equivalent of the 'nucleus carrier' is out in Dutch.4 In
other words, the difference can - again - be smoothed out in one direction
only. The second point is that often Dutch CAN accent the equivalent of the
English preposition, but in those cases the focus is very clearly different: it is
the preposition that is in focus. Take for example Bolinger (18a), John isn't
IN the house, a reply to Will you give this to John before he leaves the
house?: the Dutch Jan is niet IN het huis is only well-formed in some such
context as 'He isn't IN the house, he is on TOP of it!' Put differently, a
contextless Bolinger (18a) is ambiguous between polarity focus and focus on
the preposition.
[4] On 'preposition stressing' in English, see Bolinger (1983); for a comparison between
English and Dutch along 'focus-to-accent' lines, Gussenhoven (1984: ch. 5).
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CARLOS GUSSENHOVEN
4. CONCLUSION
There is a sense in which no theory can do without 'highlighting'. Taking
a' highlighting' view of accent forces one to consider carefully the motivation
for accentuation patterns in sentences, as is clearly shown by Bolinger's
analysis of the semantic concepts that seem to govern our decisions about
accentuation. It would have been folly to try to do justice to his demonstration
of how people make accents do what they want them to do. My sole purpose
in this reply has been to show that 'highlighting' is not applied to WORDS,
but to semantic constituents that may have a wider scope than, and may in
some cases not even coincide with the semantic content of the word the accent
is placed on, and that therefore the intervening level of structure cannot be
dispensed with.
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