Prosodic and gestural marking of complement fronting in Maltese

Publikation: Bidrag til bog/antologi/rapportBidrag til bog/antologiForskningfagfællebedømt

This paper deals with the use of complement fronting in a corpus of Maltese conversations. Four different kinds of constructions are distinguished based on the discourse status of the fronted complement: focus movement, topicalisation and two types of left dislocation. A discussion is carried out of the ways in which suprasegmental features, both in terms of prosody and gestures, underpin the discourse functions of the four construction types. Our findings show that a falling pitch accent is nearly always present on the fronted complement, and that there is a tendency for gestures to accompany this same complement. We also show that the
four construction types can be ordered on the basis of suprasegmental complexity
with focus movement as the least complex, followed by topicalisation, and finally
both types of left dislocation as the most complex.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TitelLanguages of Malta
Antal sider35
Vol/bind18
UdgivelsesstedBerlin
ForlagLanguage Science Press
Publikationsdato13 mar. 2018
Sider81-116
Kapitel4
ISBN (Trykt)978-3-96110-070-5
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 13 mar. 2018
NavnStudies in Diversity Linguistics
ISSN2363-5568

ID: 209458559