ABSTRACT
The subject matter of this dissertation is the relation between prosodic constituent structure, intonational structure, and focus in European Portuguese. Its aim was thus twofold: (i) to examine the phrasal domains of EP sentence phonology, and (ii) to describe how focus is expressed by phonological means. A prosodic account has been developed within the relation-based framework of prosodic hierarchy theory and the autosegmental-metrical theory of intonational phonology. The chosen approach was both theoretical and laboratory based, along the lines of recent laboratory phonology research.
