The Prosody of Focus in Paraguayan Guaraní1
Abstract
In many languages, prosodic prominence indicates which expressions of an utterance are focused. This study explores the prosody of focus in Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) through two production and two perception experiments conducted with native speakers of Guaraní in Paraguay. The results of the production experiments suggest that prosodic prominence is realized by stressed syllable duration, f0 slope, and pitch accent type. While the perception experiments provide evidence that Paraguayan Guaraní listeners attend to these properties in prosodic prominence perception, they also show that listeners are not at ceiling in identifying the prosodically most prominent expression from the acoustic signal alone. These results are consistent with recent findings about prosodic prominence perception in other languages and provide empirical support from an American indigenous language for the hypothesis that non-acoustic factors, such as word frequency and information status, also play a role in prominence perception.
[Keywords: Paraguayan Guaraní, focus, prosody, prominence perception]
