Abstract
The distribution of sentence accents is shown to be regulated by cognitive-semantic factors. In particular, a model of sentence accent assignment for English is proposed which is comprised of two levels of derivation: one for pitch accent assignment as a semantic-phonological mapping process having access to the specific/nonspecific and action/nonaction distinctions, and the other for nucleus assignment as a genuine phonological process having access to the phonological phrase in the sense of prosodic phonology. The validity of the model is further shown by accentual facts in German, where the mapping process for pitch accent assignment in English is also operative, and in Danish, where the two semantic distinctions play slightly different roles from those which they play in English.
