On the nature of preverbal focus in Greek : a theoretical and experimental approach

Gryllia, S. (2009)

Doctoral Thesis

The relation between prosodic realization, syntactic structure, interpretation and focus has caused much debate in the literature. This thesis aims at contributing to our understanding of the semantic and prosodic properties of object foci in Greek, employing theoretical and experimental tools. The main research question is: do preverbal object foci in Greek differ from their postverbal counterparts?. In the first part of the thesis, Greek preverbal object foci are compared to their postverbal counterparts with respect to exhaustivity, contrast and discourse topichood. For this purpose, a number of tests are applied to the Greek data. On the basis of the results of the tests, it is argued that preverbal and postverbal object foci do not differ with respect to exhaustivity and contrast. It is also argued that the two differ with respect to discourse topichood. It is shown that Greek preverbal object foci are actually fronted dis course topics. In the second part of the thesis, a production and two perception experiments were carried out to investigate the phonetic properties of preverbal and postverbal object foci in Greek. Moreover, a production and a perception experiment were carried out to investigate the phonetic realization of contrast in Greek.

• Focus
• Contrast
• Exhaustivity
• Discourse topichood
• Sentence topics
• Prosody
• Greek

• All authors: Gryllia, S.
• Supervisor: Heuven, V.J.J.P. van; Rooryck, J.E.C.V.
• Co-supervisor: Doetjes, J.S.
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT), Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University
• Date: 2009-01-20
• Title of host publication: LOT dissertation series
• ISBN (print): 9789078328742
• Name: 200
• Court: LEI Universiteit Leiden