| Resumo: | The aim of thls paper is to investigate the tonal structure of narrow focus signalled by accentual means in English and in Catalan. In particular , it analyses the status of the f O valley in the H(igh)-L( ow) movement observed after the focal constituent. In both languages, the H is interpreted as an H* pitch accent given its alignment within the accented syllable of the focal word. However, the nature ofL is unclear since it can be: analysed as the trailing tone of a bitonalaccent (H*+L)ora phraseaccent (H*L-), Thestatus ofL is investigated in words with different stress distributions { oxytones, paroxytones, and proparoxytones) in subject and verb focal positions. An examination of the timing of L with respect to the accented s)ilable demonstrates that in Catalan the L corresponds to a phrase accent since it is anchored at the end of the word irrespective of the number of post-accented syllables. In English, on the other hand, the L is better interpreted as the trailing tone of H*+L, due to its fixeded distance with respect tothe accented s)ilable, These res ults confirm the assignment of focus at phrase final position in Romance languages as opposed toGermanic languages.
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