A Phonetic Study of Intonation and Focus in Nłeʔkepmxcin (Thompson River Salish)

Abstract

This study is the first phonetic analysis of the intonational properties of focused and given information in Nłeʔkepmxcin, a stress language of the Salish family (Pacific Northwest of North America). Though the correspondence between stress and focus is often held to be a universal feature of stress languages, the phonetic results show that Nłeʔkepmxcin speakers do not mark focus with additional acoustic prominence, nor do they deaccent given information. The findings suggest that constraints like Stress-Focus and Destress-Given are not universal, even for stress languages. More generally, the study points to the importance of further research on focus and givenness marking in endangered languages, and languages typologically unrelated to Indo-European.