An experimental study of focus in Luganda

Abstract

Previous work has established that focus in Luganda is clearly signaled through the choice of syntactic configuration and morphological marking. There has been no indication in the literature to date that there is any use in the language of acoustic prominence cues for focus such as those found in English or Mandarin.
The present article provides experimental evidence that vowels in focused expressions in Luganda have greater duration, higher peak f0, greater peak intensity, and more compressed postfocal f0 range than corresponding vowels in nonfocused expressions. Such acoustic marking of focus is largely redundant in Luganda, due to the clear syntactic and morphological marking, but such redundancy is an effective adaptation to a noisy environment.
On the basis of the combined cues from the syntax, morphology and phonetics, Luganda speakers were able to accurately match a statement to the Wh-question that it answers. Allowed a free choice of answering strategies, Luganda speakers displayed a strong preference for the preverbal focus construction (a cleft-like structure) and for placement of the focused phrase at the beginning of the answer statement.