Resumen

AGUILAR RUIZ, Mary Carmen. The prosodic marking of information focus in Huave language in San Mateo del Mar, Oaxaca, México. Cuad. Lingüíst. Col. Méx. [online]. 2026, vol.13, e349.  Epub 20-Abr-2026. ISSN 2007-736X.  https://doi.org/10.24201/clecm.v13.349.

This paper investigates the different prosodic strategies used for the marking of information focus in Huave, language spoken in San Mateo del Mar, Oa xaca, Mexico. For this purpose, a study was conducted in which the prosodic properties of answers to a pronominal question, in relation to visual stimuli, were analyzed. Results show that the word bearing the nuclear accent is the last phonological word in a sentence and that the most frequent accent for signaling information focus are pitch accents (!)H* or L+H*. This allows us to postulate that Huave is a to-the-right nuclear accent language. With respect to phonological phrase, results differentiates from the findings in the analysis in Pike & Warkentin (1961), Noyer (1991) and Pak (2007) in the sense that it is not only the domain of H tone spreading to the right, but it was found that it is also possible to notice a wider pitch range (L+H*) in the position of object of a sentence, this is local prosodic resource to preserve the infraction to the restriction of phonological downstep (Gussenhoven 2004).

Palabras llave : Huave; focus; prosodic structure; intonation; phrasing.

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