The Intonation of Givenness

This book addresses students and researchers of phonetics/phonology, and the semantics and pragmatics of discourse. It employs an autosegmental-metrical model of intonation to investigate the marking of aspects of information structure, concentrating on the Given-New dimension. The empirical evidence provided here is based on German. It shows that the dichotomy of 'accented' versus 'uncaccented' corresponding to 'New' versus 'Given' information is inadequate. In fact, there is evidence that a range of pitch accent types can be mapped onto the gradient scale of Givenness degrees, with the pitch height on the accented syllable being the determining factor.