Phonetic effects of corrective focus in Estonian

The aim of this study was to investigate whether narrow corrective focus causes stronger intonational emphasis than narrow new information focus. This research question was tested for Estonian, a free word order language where an object noun phrase at the beginning of the sentence (e.g. OVS word order) is claimed to be in structural focus position. We predicted greater pitch prominence for sentenceinitial objects in focus. The acoustic parameters of pitch prominence measured in this study – peak height, slope, peak alignment – did not vary as a function of different focus types and word orders. The results therefore support semantic models (e.g. [19]) by which corrective and new information focus do not differ in terms of acoustic prominence.