Types of Focus in English

This chapter has two aims. First, section 1.0 intends to shows that the way pitch accents express information structure in English is subject to structural constraints. This view is contrasted with one in which the pitch accent directly signals the information status of the word it occurs on. The second aim, pursued in section 2.0, is to show that there isn’t just a single semantic contrast between ‘old’ and ‘new’ information: languages express various kinds of focus meanings, like reactivating focus, contingency focus and corrective focus.