Oer it beklamjen fan ferhâldingswurden yn it Frysk, it Hollânsk en it Ingelsk

Abstract

This article is concerned with the phenomenon of sentence accent on prepositions in Frisian, Dutch and English. Adopting the focus approach towards sentence accent placement outlined by Baart (1987), it describes a number of contexts in Frisian in which sentence accent is assigned to a preposition. The distinction between lexical and functional prepositions appears to be rather crucial for the possibility of preposition stress, a fact already pointed out by Gussenhoven (1984, Ch. 5) for English. Furthermore, it turns out, that with respect to sentence accent on prepositions Frisian takes an intermediate position between Dutch and English. In Dutch preposition stress is much more restricted than in Frisian, while English allows preposition stress even more freely than Frisian. An attempt is made to relate the variation between the three languages to a difference in the degree of lexicality vs functionality of their prepositions. Finally, the article points out some remaining problems and offers some suggestions for further research in the field of Frisian intonation.