Muhammad Shafiq Azid and Yi Xu
Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Volume 28, Issue S2, December 2020
Keywords: Focus, Malay, post-focus compression
Published on: 18 March 2020
Many studies across languages have recognised that focus substantially alters the prosodic structure of a sentence not only by increasing F0, intensity, and duration of the focused words but also by compressing the range of pitch and intensity of the post-focus words. Studies, however, are still not fully clear regarding the main effects of focus on focused and post-focused words in Malay. Analyses from the present study revealed that on-focused words had significantly increased F0, intensity, and duration, while post-focused words showed no significant lowering following the effect of focus. The outcomes of the study generalised Malay as a language without post-focus compression (PFC). These findings have implications on prosodic typology, language contact and the historical origin of Malay.
ISSN 0128-7702
e-ISSN 2231-8534
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