A Prosodic Projection for Role and Reference Grammar

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a prosodic projection into the RRG inventory of grammatical representation. This is a development of previous research in O’Connor (2006). In particular the prosodic projection enables investigation of prosodic aspects of information structure (focus structure) within the RRG framework to proceed alongside existing investigation of syntactic and other means of expressing and representing information structure. The prosodic projection is based on the AutosegmentalMetrical/Tones and Break Indices (AM/ToBI) approach to the representation of intonation. The AM/ToBI representation is adapted into RRG through a redefining or prosodic structure in terms of concepts like prosodic ‘template’ and prosodic ‘inventory’, which already have a degree of familiarity within RRG through their syntactic counterparts.