POW Tutorial 2
Introduction to Focus

What is focus?

Focus is the term we will use for describing the most important item in an utterance. There are many terms for this prominence: accent, nucleus, stress, emphasis. Focus is signalled by prominence: the focal word or syllable will stand out acoustically from the rest of the utterance. We will use underlining to indicate the place of focus.

I wanted chocolate and cake.    

In this utterance any word could be the focus of the utterance, but the acoustic prominence of chocolate shows that this is the focus.

Here are some other versions of the same utterance, with differing focus points:

I wanted chocolate and cake.    
I wanted chocolate and cake.    
I wanted chocolate and cake.    

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