:Plastic:

A term used to classify languages according to the strategies they use to achieve the focus/accent association. A [+plastic] language modifies the accentual structure of the sentence to signal focus while the syntactic structure remains intact. An example of a [+plastic] language is English where the nuclear accent shifts to the focal item and non-focal elements tend to be deaccented. A [-plastic] language is constrained to alter the syntactic structure of sentences to assign focus. In these languages, the prosodic structure of the utterance remains unaltered and it is the focussed constituent that moves into a prominent position. An example of a [-plastic] language is Catalan.