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In:Exploring Intensification: Synchronic, diachronic and cross-linguistic perspectives
Edited by Maria Napoli and Miriam Ravetto
[Studies in Language Companion Series 189] 2017
► pp. 193–206

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Chapter 9
Stress and tones as intensifying operators in German

 | Università di Pisa
Published online: 30 September 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.189.10cos
Abstract
Unlike the classic, most widely studied phenomena, prosody has been insufficiently investigated as form of linguistic intensification. This paper attempts to look upon some prosodic features as independent means of intensification in German. Accents, tones and contour choice may open up the possibility of distinguishing between intensified and unintensified predicates, however this differentiation cannot be described within a gradually increasing system, but it is only measurable within a bipolar, two-dimensional scale.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Intensifying from the prosodic point of view
  • 3.Accents and information structure
    • 3.1Pitch movements and informativity
  • 4.Accents, tones and conversation structure
    • 4.1Downstep
    • 4.2Tonal prefixation
    • 4.3Final boundary tones
  • 5.Contour choice and speakers’ attitudes
    • 5.1Late peaks
    • 5.2Early peaks
    • 5.30%-plateau contours
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Note
  • References
References (14)
References
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Cotgrove, Louis
2025. 137Novel methods of intensification in young people’s digitally-mediated communication. In Exploring digitally-mediated communication with corpora, ► pp. 137 ff. DOI logo
Van Olmen, Daniel
2024. Adjectival intensification in West Germanic. Studies in Language 48:2 ► pp. 436 ff. DOI logo

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