The prosodic expression of contrast in Hindi
Susanne Genzel, Frank Kügler, Potsdam University
This production study examines the prosodic means of encoding contrast in Hindi. Different target words were embedded in carrier sentences and were put in two information structural contexts, wide and contrastive focus. Contrary to what is expected from earlier findings Hindi uses prosodic means of expressing contrast on the focused word, namely an increase in pitch span and duration. These results may contribute to the understanding of intonational phonology and to the prosodic classification of Hindi.