CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1.1 Preliminaries 1.2 Motivation 1.3 Focus, focus types, and prosodic encoding of focus 1.4 Past work on the acquisition of prosodic focus marking 1.4.1 Prosodic focus marking in Germanic languages 1.4.2 The acquisition of phonological focus marking in Germanic languages 1.4.3 Phonetic focus marking in children 1.4.4 Summarising the acquisition of prosodic focus marking 1.5 Prosodic focus marking in Mandarin and Korean 1.5.1 Prosody and prosodic focus marking in Mandarin 1.5.2 Prosody and prosodic focus marking in Korean 1.6 Hypotheses and predictions 1.7 Dissertation outline CHAPTER 2 Prosodic realisation of focus in Mandarin Chinese 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Method 2.2.1 Participants 2.2.2 The picture-matching task 2.2.3 Experimental materials 2.2.4 Experimental procedure 2.2.5 Prosodic annotation 2.3 Statistical analysis and results 2.3.1 Realisation of narrow focus 2.3.2 Realisation of focus types (Narrow focus vs. broad focus vs. contrastive focus) 2.4 Conclusions CHAPTER 3 The developmental path to adult-like prosodic focus marking in Mandarin Chinese-speaking children 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Method 3.2.1 Participants 3.2.2 The picture-matching game 3.2.3 Experimental materials 3.2.4 Experimental procedure 3.2.5 Prosodic annotation 3.3 Statistical analysis and results 3.3.1 Realisation of narrow focus 3.3.2 Realisation of focus types 3.4 Discussion and conclusions CHAPTER 4 Prosodic realisation of focus in Seoul Korean: the use of prosodicphrasing and phonetic cues 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Phonological and phonetic focus marking in Korean 4.1.2 Limitations of past work 4.1.3 The current study 4.2 Method 4.2.1 Participants 4.2.2 The picture-matching task 4.2.3 Experimental materials 4.2.4 Experimental procedure 4.3 Analysis and results, part 1: prosodic phrasing 4.3.1 Prosodic annotation 4.3.2 Results on the varying of phrasal boundaries 4.4 Analysis and results, part 2: the varying of phonetic cues 4.4.1 Phonetic annotation 4.4.2 Statistical analysis and results 4.5 Conclusions CHAPTER 5 Prosodic focus marking in Seoul Korean-speaking children: the use of prosodic phrasing 5.1 Introduction 5.1.1 Prosodic encoding of focus across languages 5.1.2 The acquisition of prosodic focus marking 5.1.3 Prosodic focus marking in Korean adult speech 5.1.4 The current study 5.2 Method 5.2.1 Participants 5.2.2 The picture-matching game 5.2.3 Experimental materials 5.2.4 Experimental procedure 5.2.5 Prosodic annotation 5.3 Statistical analyses and results 5.3.1 Narrow focus vs. pre-focus (NF-m vs. NF-f) 5.3.2 Narrow focus vs. post-focus (NF-m vs. NF-i) 5.3.3 Narrow focus vs. broad focus (NF-m vs. BF) 5.3.4 Narrow focus vs. contrastive focus (NF-m vs. CF-m) 5.4 Discussion and conclusions CHAPTER 6 Prosodic focus marking in Seoul Korean-speaking chidren: the use of duration-and pitch-related phonetic cues 6.1 Introduction 6.1.1 The acquisition of phonetic focus marking 6.1.2 Phonetic focus marking in Korean adult speech 6.1.3 The current study 6.2 Method 6.2.1 Participants 6.2.2 The picture-matching game 6.2.3 Experimental materials 6.2.4 Experimental procedure 6.2.5 Sentence selection 6.2.6 Phonetic annotation 6.3 Statistical analysis and results 6.3.1 Realisation of narrow focus 6.3.2 Realisation of focus types 6.4 Discussion and conclusions CHAPTER 7 General discussion and conclusions 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Summary of the main findings 7.2.1 The acquisition of prosodic focus marking in Mandarin 7.2.2 The acquisition of prosodic focus marking in Korean 7.2.3 The developmental paths to adult-like prosodic focus marking 7.3 Hypotheses and predictions revisited 7.4 Limitations and directions for future studies REFERENCES APPENDICES Appendix A: Mandarin speakers Appendix B: Mandarin sentences Appendix C: Korean speakers Appendix D: Korean sentences SAMENVATTING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CURRICULUM VITAE