Deaccentuation is commonly explained as a consequence of the givenness of the information referred to. However, speakers often accent given information, so that a more complex explanation of deaccentuation is required. This work investigates the contribution of persistence of grammatical role and surface position to the occurrence of deaccentuation. We report a production experiment in which these features were varied systematically. The results indicated that persistence of grammatical role and surface position both contributed to deaccentuation.
Keywords: repairs, disfluencies