How prosody signals force and focus—A study of pitch accents in Russian yes–no questions

Prosody signals sentential mood/force and information-structural distinctions in many languages. A case in point, discussed in the present paper, is Russian main clause yes–no questions, which differ from declarative clauses primarily by their intonational pattern. We address the question of how force (yes–no question versus declarative) and focus (highlighting, contrast) are signalled by intonational means in Russian. Based on authentic data, a production (reading) study of sentences in various contexts, and a perception experiment, it is shown how pitch height, accent shape, and peak alignment conspire in marking the relevant distinctions, where ambiguities arise, and what pragmatic distinctions cannot be disambiguated by prosody.