The Phonetics of Prosodic Marking of Focus in Sylheti Tulika Gogoi, Amalesh Gope Department of Linguistics and Language Technology, Tezpur University, India tulikagogoi303@gmail.com, amalesh@tezu.ac.in ABSTRACT This paper investigates the prosodic properties of the focus marking system in Sylheti. Sylheti exhibits two-way tonal contrasts. The prosodic means used for focus marking in tone languages include pitch register modification, durational changes, and phrasing. A production experiment was designed to examine the prosodic properties of focus. Results confirm that focus in Sylheti is indicated by pitch register modification of focused words with underlying L and H lexical tones. In-situ focus, the contrastive and corrective focus on the object, are consistently marked by a lowered f0 scaling on the target word. This marks a deviation from the 'effort code,' a phenomenon also observed in Akan. Additionally, significant modifications of pitch register in pre-focal words have also been observed on in-situ focus on the object and contrastive focus. An overall reduced duration on the focused constituents (including the pre-focal and post-focal constituents) is observed compared to their broad- focus counterparts. Keywords: prosody, in-situ focus, contrastive focus, corrective focus, pitch register. 1. INTRODUCTION In most languages of the world, intonation serves the function of conveying different post-lexical meanings. Apart from marking sentence types and dividing stretches of speech into smaller units, intonation also serves to encode focus or prominence in languages. However, many works on intonation in tonal languages indicate that tonal languages generally avoid complex intonation systems [1, 2, 3, 4]. It is crucial to examine whether they employ any prosodic means to mark focus to understand the extent to which intonation is used in tonal languages. Some of the prosodic cues that are reported to be employed in tonal languages include pitch register modification [5, 6, 7, 8, 9], lengthening or durational changes [8, 9], alteration of intensity, or post-focal compression [10, 11]. Mandarin uses register expansion for focus marking, leading to higher scaling of H and lower scaling of L tone [9]. Akan employs pitch register lowering as a prosodic means for marking focus [11]. Mandarin also uses post- focal compression (henceforth, PFC) for encoding focus. PFC is also present in Bodo, where it indicates in-situ focus. [7]. This paper addresses how the phonetic properties of focus are prosodically marked in Sylheti. Some portions of an utterance can be focused on or highlighted to signal newness or contrastivity, which requires the hearer's special attention. A language may employ various phonological, lexical, morphological, and grammatical means for marking focus. The present paper examines the prosodic means used in Sylheti to encode different types of focus on words in the object positions. Analysis of in situ focus on the object (i.e., the focus that does not involve any syntactic movement of the object, often realized in wh- answers), contrastive focus, and corrective focus in Sylheti show that focus marking strategies differ from those primarily seen in other (tonal) languages. It involves lowering the pitch register on the target words in contrast to the general expectation of focus attracting a higher pitch. This can be interpreted as a deviation from one of the biological codes, 'the effort code,' a phenomenon also reported to be employed in Akan [6]. The pre-focal constituents exhibit some modifications in Sylheti, while no consistent changes were observed in the pitch levels of post- focal domains. Pre-focal words in sentences with in- situ focus and corrective focus on the object have lowered pitch, while in contrastive focus, they are realized with a higher pitch than their broad focus counterparts. 2. LANGUAGE UNDER STUDY: SYLHETI Sylheti is generally considered to be one of the varieties of eastern Bangla [12]. It is typically spoken in the Sylheti district of northeastern Bangladesh. In India, Sylheti speakers inhabit two northeastern states- the Barack Valley region of Assam and northern Tripura (districts such as Kumarghat, Dharamnagar, and Kailashar). The distinct phonetic and phonological properties distinguish Sylheti from Standard colloquial Bangla [12, 13, 14, 15]. One such property is the application