Blurb:

In this paper we have studied the prosodic aspect of how Contrastive focus (henceforth CF) is marked in SCA (Standard Colloquial Assamese) and NVA (Nalbariya Variety of Assamese), two varieties of Assamese, a head-final eastern Indo-Aryan language (Goswami, 1982) with SOV as canonical word order. In our study we have found that these two varieties employ the same pitch accent (L*+H) and boundary tone (HP) to demarcate both focused and non-focused phrases; the final phrase (verb) cannot be focused. When the phrase length is limited to two to three syllables, the trailing tone of the pitch accent is left unrealized, and pitch pattern becomes L*HP. A focused phonological phrase differs from a non-focused one in terms of increased pitch range [(F0max at the right boundary – F0min at the first syllable)]. Following Ladd’s Free Gradient Hypothesis (Ladd, 1994; Gussenhoven, 1999), we propose here that in SCA and NVA pitch range is used in a categorically distinct way rather than in a gradient way. Similar to the phonological implementation of pitch range in the languages like Catalan (Borras-Comes, Vanrell, & Prieto, 2014), English (Ladd D. R., 1994; 1996), Spanish (Prieto, 2004) among others, pitch range may potentially be represented phonologically in the Assamese varieties.