ABSTRACT
In most Germanic languages, words which are discourse “given” in context are routinely “de-accented,” in the sense that a content word which one would normally expect to be accented is realized without an accent (Ladd 1980). The consistency of this effect in Germanic languages has led to the widely held notion that intonational pitch accents are inherently focus-marking (e.g. Gussenhoven 2004). However, Ladd (1996) demonstrates convincingly that the contexts which in Germanic languages trigger de-accenting do not do so in other languages. The “non-de-accenting” languages that he cites are largely (though not exclusively) of the Romance family. To illustrate, in English if a word is repeated from earlier in the discourse it fails to be accented, as shown in (1); here the word “German” in B’s reply is realized without an accent because it is repeated from A’s question (accented words in small capitals, Ladd 1996: 175):
(1) English A: I found an article for you in a German journal. B: I don’t read German.
