Prosodic and gestural marking of complement fronting in Maltese

TY - CHAP

T1 - Prosodic and gestural marking of complement fronting in Maltese

AU - Paggio, Patrizia

AU - Galea, Luke

AU - Vella, Alexandra

PY - 2018/3/13

Y1 - 2018/3/13

N2 - 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 thefour construction types can be ordered on the basis of suprasegmental complexitywith focus movement as the least complex, followed by topicalisation, and finallyboth types of left dislocation as the most complex.

AB - 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 thefour construction types can be ordered on the basis of suprasegmental complexitywith focus movement as the least complex, followed by topicalisation, and finallyboth types of left dislocation as the most complex.

UR - http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/182

U2 - 10.5281/zenodo.1181783

DO - 10.5281/zenodo.1181783

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-3-96110-070-5

VL - 18

T3 - Studies in Diversity Linguistics

SP - 81

EP - 116

BT - Languages of Malta

PB - Language Science Press

CY - Berlin

ER -