Introduction

This book investigates the interplay of lexical, pragmatic and prosodic factors in determining the pitch contours and durational patterns in two dialects of Serbian and Croatian (S/C): I the Serbian Belgrade dialect with lexical duration and pitch contrasts and the Croatian Zagreb dialect without such contrasts. Additionally, this is an investigation of how the presence or absence of phonological contrasts in pitch and duration affects the expression of focus and how/if it constrains the effects of tonal crowding/proximity to intonational boundaries in these two dialects.