Modalpartikeln in deutschen nicht-kanonischen Fragesätzen: Funktionale Merkmale und prosodische Realisierung

This study investigates the role of modal particles within non-canonical questions in the German language and analyses the behaviour of prosody within this category of questions when a modal particle is present. To do so, a corpus of 95 non-canonical questions (divided into rhetorical and topic-setting) from the plenary sessions of the German parliament is examined and a frequency analysis of modal particles within the corpus as well as a prosodic analysis of intonation and pitch accents via Praat is performed. The results reveal that modal particles are used in the majority of rhetorical questions but are rarer in topic-setting questions and that the most frequently used particle is denn. The prosodic analysis shows that particles are never accented but are placed immediately preceding or following a prominent pitch accent.