The interaction of prosody and syntax in Samoan focus marking

• First major study of focus-marking in Samoan, an Austronesian VSO language.
• Analysed prosody and syntax of answers to questions eliciting different focus types.
• Most consistent focus-marking strategy is fronting the focus.
• AM analysis of prosody showed initial phonological phrase is most prominent.
• Therefore, fronted focus in position of maximal prominence.

This paper presents the first study of prosodic and syntactic focus marking in Samoan, an Austronesian VSO language. It is shown that while Samoan appears to use syntax to mark focus, focus marking in Samoan actually fits well within the generalisation that focus must be maximally prosodically prominent. Seven native speakers were recorded answering questions about pictures depicting simple events. The questions were designed to elicit agent or object focus, and question-under-discussion (QUD) focus or contrastive focus. Results showed different speakers had different focus-marking strategies. Two consistently used a cleft construction to front the focused constituent. Two speakers fronted focused agents, but not objects. The final three used basic verb-agent-object ordering in all focus conditions. Prosody was analysed within the Autosegmental Metrical framework. The initial phonological phrase was always the most prominent. Therefore, when the focus was fronted, it was maximally prominent, making Samoan a language with prosodically motivated syntactic movement, like Spanish and Hungarian. In the verb-agent-object sentences, the verb and agent were in the initial phrase. Speakers raised the accent on the object in object focus, and lowered it in agent focus; although they did not do this consistently. There was no prosodic marking of focus on the agent. This is interestingly opposite the asymmetry between focus marking on the subject and object in English and Romance languages, with the same prosodic motivation.