Focus in Donegal Irish (Gaelic) and Donegal English bilinguals
Maria O’Reilly, Amelie Dorn and Ailbhe Ní Chasaide, Trinity College Dublin
This paper examines the effects of focus on the global and local f0 variations in the contours of Donegal Irish and Donegal English, produced by bilingual speakers. The analysis was conducted on a controlled data set, where contrastive focus was elicited on each of the 3 potentially accented syllables along with broad focus. Results suggest that focus in non-final IP position in both of these Northern varieties is realised by expanding the f0 range associated with the focal accent and subsequent obligatory deaccentuation of the postfocal material, as well as range reduction or deaccentuation of prefocal accents. IP-final focus largely resembles broad focus. Index Terms: focus, intonation, Irish Gaelic, Irish English.