136 Malcah Yaeger-Dror, Tania Granadillo, Shoji Takano, and Lauren Hall-Lew
maximizes the ability of conversational partners to focus attention on infor-
mation which is critical to mutual understanding (Cutler et al. 1997). The
assumed motivation for such prosodic salience will be referred to here as the
Cognitive Prominence Principle.
In addition, even within a single language dialects differ in their use of
prosodic prominence ( e.g., Beckman et al. 2002; Grabe et al 2002; Fagyal
2004; O’Rourke 2005; Thomas and Carter 2006; Mennen 2007; Estebas-Vila-
plana 2007; Ladd et al 2009).
2.3 Sentential position and prosody
Syntactic position within a sentence inÀ uences prosodic options (Ladd 2008),
and it is possible to manipulate focus by altering such positions (e.g., Ochs,
Schegloff, Thompson 1996; Danieli et al. 2004; Coussé et al. 2004; Swerts
and Wijk 2005, inter alia). The unmarked sentence contour in most languages
permits an early prosodic peak with downstep narrowing the permissible F0
range later in the sentence. Many studies have documented that critical infor-
mation is more likely to be placed early in the sentence, and that material
presented early in the sentence is most likely to be prosodically prominent
(e.g., Cutler et al. 1997; Horne 2000; Jun 2005; Ladd 2008).
In theory, the closer the NEG is to the beginning of the sentence, the
greater the range and manipulability of prosodic prominence, so a speaker’s
option to exploit the position of NEG to emphasize or neutralize its cognitive
salience is relevant to the discussion. Discussion of variation of placement to
manipulate prosodic prominence can be found in Horne (2000), Jun (2005)
and Takano (2008).
In declarative sentences, the unmarked placement for negatives analyzed
here—NEG—includes ‘verbal- no’ for Spanish, not for English, nai for Japa-
nese: Spanish verbal-no occurs before the verb, near the beginning of the sen-
tence; English not immediately follows the English ‘AUX’ verb, and precedes
the main verb, while nai generally occurs near the end of the sentence (Takano
2008; Jun 2005).
Even given that there is a strong preference for the unmarked position, it
is reasonable to assume that the likelihood of prominence in any given case is
mediated by the NEG’s unmarked position in the sentence.
Considering both production and perception studies, Cutler et al. (1997)
conclude that “speakers seldom de-accent (critical) information, and if they
do, this hinders listeners.” They show that while a prominent syntactic posi-
tion can be neutralized by the overriding signi¿ cance of other words in the
environment, focally informative words are unlikely to be reduced because