Brazilian Veneto (BV), an understudied variety of Veneto spoken in several areas of Brazil, has only one rhotic phoneme, which has been described as alternating between [r] and [ɾ] (e.g., Frosi & Mioranza, 1983). I investigate whether rhotic variation in BV is conditioned by prosodic factors (i.e., position in the syllable, position in the word, and stress) through an analysis of rhotic duration based on data from a naming task. I hypothesize that stronger prosodic positions yield longer rhotics (i.e., trills). The results overall confirm this hypothesis, with longer rhotics favored in stressed, word-initial singleton onsets. Participants’ productions are also analyzed qualitatively, revealing that rhotic variation involves not only the production of trills and taps, but also approximants and fricatives. Potential effects of contact with Portuguese on BV rhotic variation are discussed.

Chapter 9 explores prosodic structure as an integral component of linguistic structure. Prosodic structure specifies how phonological constituents are to be grouped to form larger units within a given utterance; this is known as their delimitative function. Prosodic structure also helps determine which of phonological constituents are produced with prominence relative to the other constituents; this is known as its culminative function. These functions entail strengthening of segmental realization (prosodic strengthening), often leading to linguistic enhancement of syntagmatic and paradigmatic contrast. Theories of the phonetics-prosody interface assume that phonetic realization of the spoken utterance is fine-tuned according to prosodic structure. In turn, crucial aspects of phonetic realization signal higher-order prosodic structure for listeners.

The primary goal of this chapter is to present the state of the art on Chinese intonation research, with a focus on how tone and intonation interact. To this end, the general functions and forms of intonation observed in (Mandarin) Chinese are first introduced. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the multiplexing of the f0 channel for tone and intonation in varieties of Chinese as well as the different proposals posited for intonation modeling. The secondary goal of this chapter is to highlight open issues and suggest potential points for future research on intonation in Chinese.

This chapter reviews the syntactic and prosodic correlates of information structure in Germanic languages. The chapter starts with an introduction to the information structural notions: focus, topic, and givenness related to the way information is stored in human memory and organized in communication. The effect of information structure on prosody in these languages can be felt in several ways: pitch accent addition because of focus, pitch accent deletion because of givenness, topicalization because of topic. In syntax, the effects are also numerous: scrambling, a series of leftward movements: topicalization, passivization, dative construction, object-shift, and a series of rightward movements: extraposition, right-dislocation, heavy NP-shift, afterthought. Pronominalization and ellipsis are the results of givenness. At the end of the chapter, focus-sensitive particles (or “association with focus”) like exclusive only, additive also and scalar even, are shortly mentioned. Germanic languages show a wealth of effects, but they also differ among each other in subtle ways.