СПЕЦИАЛИЗИРАН СЕМИНАР

Lexical and fixed word stress: Representation, Production and Perception

в рамките на

55th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, SLE

24–27 August 2022 – SLE 2022

(https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2022/)

 

Уводна статия

Lexical and fixed word stress: Representation, Production and Perception

Mirena Patseva, Bistra Andreeva & Vesela Chergova

(Sofia University, Saarland University & Sofia University)

https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2022/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/WS-8-Lexical-and-fixed-word-stress.pdf

 

Keywords: word stress, acoustic dimensions of stress, phonology-morphology interface, production, perception

The workshop aims at bringing together research on the phonetics and phonology of word-level stress in order to deepen our understanding of the role of stress in the production and perception of speech. Languages differ with respect to the representation and implementation of stress. Among the languages with word‐level stress, two groups of languages are distinguished: (a) fixed stress languages, where stress is placed in a predictable position within the word, and (b) lexical stress languages, where stress is assigned in random positions within the word. In the first group of languages, stress always falls on the same syllable, on the basis of purely phonological principles (e.g., edgemost rules, feet, syllabic structure, vocalic peaks, etc.). The most common are the languages with initial stress followed by those with penult, final, pen-initial, and antepenult (see, e.g., Goedemans et al. 2015).

In the second group of languages (e.g., Greek, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Dutch), the position of primary stress is determined in the lexicon. The relative stress level of syllables can convey lexical distinctions, in the sense that there are minimal pairs that only differ in the location of stress. Moreover, morphemes may be endowed with a lexical mark which may affect the location of stress (van der Hulst 2014: 21). Such stress systems are considered morphologically determined and morphemes are categorized as being prosodically specified or not. The former bear stress information as part of their lexical representations. The principle that allows the communication between the phonological and the morpho-syntactic component and requires prosodic structure to be built on a par with morphological structure is known as prosodic compositionality. The relationships between the particular accentual specification of the morphemes could be hierarchically organized in term of headedness (Revithiadou 1999). The involvement of morphology in the stress processing was demonstrated in Neuroscience by EEG studies (e. g., Zora et al. 2016). Furthermore, the prosodically unspecified morphemes obtain stress through phonological principles (Revithiadou & Lengeris 2016). Actually, most languages display elements of both stress categories (lexical stress vs. fixed stress). For example, Greek is a language with lexical stress system and is characterized by a predictable pattern of three-syllable window at the right edge of the word. So, the two categories should be considered the two endpoints of a stress continuum along which different languages can be placed relative to each other (Gordon & van der Hulst 2020: 69).

Among the current theoretical approaches to the morphologically conditioned phonology is the theory of level/ stratal ordering (e.g. Kiparsky 1982) recast within Optimality Theory into Stratal OT (Kiparsky 2000, 2003, 2008; Bermúdez-Otero 2011). The Cophonology approach (which departs from the stratal ordering theory) associates morphological constructions or lexical classes with different constraint rankings. The constraints are general, but have different ranking across cophonologies (Inkelas & Zoll 2007, among others). In the indexed constraint approach, there is a single constraint ranking for the language, but the constraints are indexed to individual morphological contexts and split into different indexed versions (McCarthy & Prince 1995, Itô & Mester 1999, Alderete 2001). Embick (2010) considered the different forms of Optimality Theory as a “Globalist’s” perspective and suggested an alternative “Localist” view considering the recent developments in Distributed Morphology and the Minimalist Program.

The difference between stressed and unstressed syllables is realized in several acoustic dimensions: duration, intensity, fundamental frequency (f0), and spectral properties of the (vocalic) unit (Fry 1958, Bolinger 1961, Lehiste 1970). Stressed syllables are longer and louder, and present more f0 movement. Additionally, stressed vowels show increased vowel dispersion and magnitude of formant change. These differences are less pronounced in fixed stress languages (Suomi, Toivanen, Ylitalo, 2003, for Finnish; Dogil, 1999, for Polish). Compared with speakers of lexical stress languages, speakers of fixed stress languages have difficulties in distinguishing non-words that differ only in stress pattern (e.g., Dupoux et al. 1997, 2001, 2008; Peperkamp et al. 2010; Domahs et al. 2012).

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following: acoustic-phonetic correlates of word stress; word stress in speech perception; word stress in L2; effects of word stress on segments; phonotactics, and phonological processes; lexical stress and the vocabulary; prosody-morphology interface; relationship between morphologically governed stress and predictable metric tendencies.

The following questions and themes are of particular interest:

  • How can one define the domain of word stress in morphologically determined stress systems?
  • How do the properties of a complex form relate to the phonological representations of its parts?
  • How can the variable prosodic behavior of multi-purpose suffixes be interpreted?
  • What is the role of speaker specific differences in the morphology-phonology interface?
  • How do central properties of stress systems, such as predictability of stress and metrical structure, are reflected in the prosodic processing of words?
  • What crosslinguistic generalizations can be made regarding the predictability of stress and its acoustic manifestation?
  • Is stress in the default position manifested phonetically in the same way as stress in a non-canonical, exceptional position?

References

Alderete, J. (2001). Morphologically governed accent in Optimality Theory. Routledge publishing series, Outstanding dissertations in Linguistics. New York: Routledge.

Bermúdez-Otero, R. (2018). Stratal Phonology. In: S. J. Hannahs and A. R. K. Bosch (eds.), The Routledge handbook of phonological theory, 100-134. Abingdon: Routledge.

Bolinger, D. (1961). Contrastive Accent and Contrastive Stress, Language, 37 (1961), 83- 96. Reprinted in Bolinger, Forms of English.

Dogil, G. (1999). The phonetic manifestation of word stress in Lithuanian, Polish and German and Spanish. In: H. van der Hulst (ed.), Word prosodic systems in the languages of Europe, 273–311. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Domahs, U., Genc, S., Knaus, J., et al. (2012). Processing (un‐)predictable word stress: ERP evidence from Turkish. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28, 335–354.

Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., Sebastian, N., & Mehler, J. (1997). A destressing “deafness” in French? Journal of Memory and Language, 26(3), 406–421.

Dupoux, E., Peperkamp, S., and Sebastián‐ Gallés, N. (2001). A robust method to study stress “deafness.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110, 1606–1618.

Dupoux, E., Sebastián, N., Navarrete, E., Peperkamp, S. (2008). Persistent stress ‘deafness’: The case of French learners of Spanish. Cognition 106(2). 682-706.

Embick, D. (2010). Localism versus Globalism in Morphology and Phonology, Cambridge: MIT Press, MA.

Fry, D.B. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech, 1, 126-152.

Goedemans, R., Heinz, J. & van der Hulst, H. (2015). StressTyp 2. http://st2.ullet.net

Gordon, M. and van der Hulst, H. (2020). Word stress. In: C. Gussenhoven and A. Chen. (eds.), The Handbook of Prosody. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 66-77.

Hulst, H. G. van der (2014). Word Stress: past, present and future. In: Hulst, H. van der (ed.), Word Stress: Theoretical and typological issues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-55.

Inkelas, Sh. and Zoll, Ch. (2007). Is grammar dependence real? A comparison between cophonological and indexed constraint approaches to morphologically conditioned phonology, Linguistics, 45–1 (2007), 133–171

Ito, J. and Mester, A. (1999). The phonological lexicon. In: N. Tsujimura (ed.), The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, 62–100. Malden: Blackwell, MA.

Kiparsky, P. (2000). Opacity and cyclicity. The Linguistic Review 17, 351–367.

Kiparsky, P. (1982). Lexical morphology and phonology. In: S. Yang (ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm, I3–91. Linguistics Society of Korea. Seoul: Hanshin.

Lehiste, I. (1970). Suprasegmentals. Cambridge: MIT Press.

McCarthy, J. and Prince, A. (1995). Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. In: J. Beckman, L. Dickey, and S. Urbanczyk (eds.), University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18: Papers in Optimality Theory, 249–384. Amherst, MA: GLSA.

Peperkamp, S., Vendelin, I., & Dupoux, E. (2010). Perception of predictable stress: A cross‐ linguistic investigation. Journal of Phonetics, 38, 422–430.

Revithiadou, A. and Lengeris, A. (2016). One or many? In search of the default stress in Greek. In: Heinz, J., Goedemans, R., and van der Hulst, H. (eds.), Dimensions of Stress, 263–290. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Revithiadou, A. (1999). Headmost Accent Wins: Head Dominance and Ideal Prosodic Form in Lexical Accent Systems. LOT Dissertation Series 15 (HIL/Leiden Universiteit). Holland Academic Graphics, The Hague.

Suomi, K., Toivanen, J., and Ylitalo, R. (2003). Durational and tonal correlates of accent in Finnish, Journal of Phonetics, Volume 31, Issue 1,113-138.

Zora, H, Tomas. R, Schwarz, I. C., and Heldner, M. (2016). Lexical Specification of Prosodic Information in Swedish: Evidence from Mismatch Negativity, Front Neuroscience, 10: 533.

 

 

 

Списък на заявилите участие в семинара

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

 

  1. Harry van der Hulst, University of Connecticut, A unified account of phonological and morphological accent,
  2. Donca Steriade, MIT Linguistics and Philosophy, Cambridge, Secondary stress in Romanian: cues vs. Consequences
  3. Anthi Revithiadou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Morphosyntactic structure and lexical accent assignment
  4. Mitko Sabev, University of Cambridge, Spectral and Durational Unstressed Vowel Reduction: An acoustic study of monolingual and bilingual speakers of Bulgarian and Turkish
  5. Ksenia Bogomolets, University of Auckland, Lexical accent, morphological structure, and illusion of complexity,
  6. Lena Borise & Ekaterina Georgieva, Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, Acoustic correlates of initial and final stress in Udmurt,
  7. Tammy Ganster, Trier University, Individual differences and the morphology-phonology interface: Stress placement in complex English words
  8. Katharina Zahner-Ritter, University of Trier, Sophie Kutscheid, University of Konstanz, Bettina Braun, University of Konstanz. How experience with high and low accents affects the cue weights in stress processing: Evidence from exposure-test paradigms using eye-tracking
  9. Pinar Uzun, University of Ankara, and Karolina Broś, University of Warsaw, Pupillary responses to (un-)predictable word stress: Evidence from Turkish
  10. Vesela Chergova, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Word stress in European Portuguese L2 acquisition by Bulgarian learners,
  11. Mirena Patseva, Sofia University, Some aspects of the prosodic behavior of prefixes in the Bulgarian language
  12. Gueorgui Hristovsky, Non-cyclic suffixes and clitics in Bulgarian
  13. Ora Matushansky matushansky@cnrs.fr, Russian Verbal Stress Retraction, A Bigger Picture
  14. Angela James, University of Konstanz and Katharina Zahner-Ritter, University of Trier, The phonetics of sentence-level stress in German and English: A comparison between L1 and L2 productions
  15. Nicolas Royer-Artuso, UQAC & IFEA, The Lexicon-Morphology – Stress ‘interface’ in Turkish: the importance of the definition of word and what can word-based approaches to morphology can contribute to the debate
  16. Golovina Arina, Dubna State University, Russia. Stress in «HARASS»: situation in modern British English

 

 

РЕЗЮМЕТА НА ПОДАДЕНИТЕ ДОКЛАДИ ЗА СЕМИНАРА

 

1 A unified account of phonological and morphological accent

Harry van der Hulst

University of Connecticut

 

In this talk I will outline a unified theory of word prominence, which covers the role of phonological accent rules, while considering that such rules often apply within domains that are smaller than the whole grammatical word. These domains, that I will call phonotactic domains, are dependent on the morpho-syntactic structure of words, as well as on specific demands of affixes in forming such word-internal domains. The typological literature on word prominence usually classifies languages as having accent (typically called ‘stress’) on a syllable whose location is determined with reference to the left or right ‘word’ edge (possibly sensitive to syllable weight), implicitly assuming that the notion ‘word’ is the ‘grammatical word’, thus ignoring a possible role for smaller, word-internal domains. Accentual algorithms select a ‘winning’ domain accent from pre-given ‘competing’ syllabic accents that are due to syllable weight or that are diacritic (‘diacritic weight’). Bogomolets (2020) shows that the languages of the world choose from two kinds of selection strategies to selects winning accents, that I will here call linear and hierarchical. When resolution is linear the accent algorithm is purely phonologically-driven. Accent systems that appeal to hierarchical resolution can then be called morphologically-driven. However, we will see that the phonotactic structure also plays a role in phonologically-driven accent systems when these have more than one accentual algorithm for different domains of the phonotactic structure. A key notion will be that the phonotactic structure is headed, which makes it a dependency structure of sorts. The backdrop of my approach is that there are different phonological structures (following Rischel 1987), called phonotactic and prosodic, respectively. The latter is relevant to rhythmic organization which I have analyzed as post-accentual in my previous work (van der Hulst 1996, 1997, 2012, 2014).

 

Bogomolets, Ksenia. 2020. Lexical Accent in Languages with Complex Morphology. PhD University of Connecticut, 2020.

Hulst, Harry van der. 1996. Separating primary accent and secondary accent. In Rob Goedemans, Harry van der Hulst & Ellis A. M. Visch. eds. Stress patterns of the world (HIL Publications 2). The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics, 1-26.

Hulst, Harry van der. 1997. Primary accent is non-metrical. Rivista di Linguistica 9/1: 99-127.

Hulst, Harry van der. 2012. Deconstructing stress. Lingua 122/13: 1494-521.

Hulst, Harry van der. 2014. Representing rhythm. In Harry van der Hulst. ed. Word stress: Theoretical and typological issues, 325-65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hulst, Harry van der. To appear. A unified account of morphological and phonologucal accent. In K. Bogomolets & H. van der Hulst. eds. Word prominence in languages with complex morphology. Oxford University Press.

Rischel, J. 1987. Is there just one hierarchy of prosodic categories? In: W. Dressler, H.C. Luschützky, O.E. Pfeiffer and J. Rennison. eds. Phonologica 1984. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 253-259.

 

 

2 Secondary stress in Romanian: cues vs. consequences

Donca Steriade,

MIT Linguistics and Philosophy, Cambridge

 

Primary stress in Romanian is cued by loudness, duration and F0 peaks (Rariș 2016). This stress triggers vowel reduction. Its location is reflected in the meter: alignments between main stress and ictus are almost invariable in poetry.

A secondary stress is also occasionally detectable, on the first syllable, subject to clash. Unlike main stress, this stress is not invariably marked by either duration or intensity (Rariș 2016). The initial undergoes reduction like completely unstressed syllables. The placement of ictus in meter ignores it: any non-main stressed syllable of a word, including the initial, can map to strong or weak positions, depending on what the meter requires.

Despite this, the initial secondary stress has audible consequences. It inhibits glide formation when main stress directly follows, (1): glide formation is normally required (1.a) but it becomes impossible if it leads to a stress clash between the secondary and main stress, or to the loss of the secondary stress (1.b). Stress patterns are shown in SPE’s numerical notation.

  1. a. dulăp-[j]or (201), *dulăp-[i]or (2001) ‘cupboard-DIM’
  2. frăț-[i]or (201), *frăț-[j]or (21, 01) ‘brother-DIM’

Second, initial stress also triggers adoption of stem extensions in derivatives like (2). These involve the plural morph -ur- to derivatives of nouns that pluralize in uri; or the definite article -ul- in derivatives of nouns whose definite form takes -ul. These stem extensions, although morphosyntactically unjustifiable, facilitate the preferred stress pattern 201X, with initial secondary stress and no clash, as in (2.a); longer stems don’t need an extension (2.b); similarly for definite extensions (2.c vs. 2.d).

  1. a. plural stem extension: fum ‘smoke’, fum-uri ‘-Pl’, fum-ur-iu ‘smoky’ (201)
  2. no extension in longer stems: argint ‘silver’, argint-uri ‘-Pl’ argint-iu (201)
  3. definite stem extension: praz ‘leek’, praz-ul ‘-DEF’, prăz-ul-iu (201)
  4. no extension in longer stems: castan ‘chestnut, castan-ul, căstăn-iu ‘chestnut-colored’

The talk discusses the relation between cues-to-stress and indirect segmental consequences of stress in Romanian and other systems.

 

 

3 Morphosyntactic structure and lexical accent assignment

Anthi Revithiadou

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

 

In this article we explore the source of accentual dominance in a group of stress and pitch accent systems, broadly known as lexical accent systems, in relation to the architectural properties of the Grammar as well as the idiosyncratic accentual properties of the exponents of morphosyntactic elements. The empirical basis of this study are languages with complex morphology, such as, for instance, Greek, Sanskrit, Yakima Sahaptin, because they provide a fruitful ground for exploring the effects of both phonological and morphological factors in the assignment of lexical accent.

Following Embick (2010, 2014), we draw a line between phase cyclicity and phonological cyclicity so that at the PF exponents of both phase and non-phase heads can be allowed to equally be accentually dominant (=stress/pitch accent affecting) or not. Furthermore, we propose that accentuation proceeds in a step-wise fashion that follows critical end points in the morphosyntactic derivation as these are determined by phase heads. In particular, PF exploits the exponents of phase heads that are associated with an accent, in order to demarcate important stages in the assembling of constituent structure. (Accentless exponents of phase heads appear to have no effect on accent assignment.)

The study of the systems under investigation reveals some important generalizations between phasehood and phonological dominance: First, non-phase heads cannot be accentually dominant, a generalization that extends to other similar systems (see, also, for instance, Nez Perce, Bogomolets 2020; Squamish, Dyck 2004; among others). Second, no language in our study exhibited accented exponents of phase heads that are not accentually prominent compared to some other exponent in the word. These findings suggest that lexical accents have a functional motivation: they have to be pronounced and the best route for being realized is by attaching to exponents of phase heads.

 

References

Bogomolets, Ksenia. 2020. Lexical accent in languages with complex morphology. Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut.

Dyck, Ruth Anne. 2004. Prosodic and morphological factors in Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh) stress assignment. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Victoria.

Embick, David. 2010. Localism versus globalism in morphology and phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Embick, David. 2014. Phase cycles, φ-cycles, and phonological (in)activity. In The form of structure, the structure of form: Essays in honor of Jean Lowenstamm, ed. Sabrina Bendjaballah, Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi, and Nicola Lampitelli, 270–286. Language Faculty and Beyond, vol. 12. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

 

 

4 Spectral and Durational Unstressed Vowel Reduction:

An acoustic study of monolingual and bilingual speakers of Bulgarian and Turkish

Mitko Sabev

Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge

 

We report results of an extensive acoustic study of a range of phonetic and phonological phenomena traditionally referred to as unstressed vowel reduction. Five geographically contiguous varieties of two typologically distinct and genealogically unrelated languages, Bulgarian and Turkish, are investigated: two standard varieties – Western Bulgarian and Istanbul Turkish – and three varieties from northeast Bulgaria: the Bulgarian and Turkish of a bilingual community, and monolingual Eastern Bulgarian.

Vowels are modelled as three-dimensional objects defined by duration, F1 and F2 frequencies. Unstressed Vowel Shift or the systematic differences between stressed and unstressed realisations, categorical target split and contrast neutralisation are implicationally related yet distinct aspects of traditional vowel reduction which are addressed separately. It is demonstrated that Unstressed Vowel Shift may, but does not have to, result in the phonologisation of a separate unstressed target, which in turn may, but again does not have to, merge with the target of another vowel.

Eastern Bulgarian exhibits the highest degree of overall reduction: Unstressed Vowel Shift is strong and categorical, and results in the unstressed merger of all open–close vowel pairs. Istanbul Turkish lies at the opposite end of a reduction continuum, with gradient Unstressed Vowel Shift under temporal pressure. Western Bulgarian shows different degrees of reduction across vowel pairs. The bilingual varieties reveal intricate patterns of interference: Bilingual Turkish is influenced by Eastern Bulgarian and exhibits greater reduction than both Istanbul Turkish and Bilingual Bulgarian, the latter displaying little reduction as a result of substratal Turkish transfer.

In addition to providing an in-depth analysis of unstressed vowel reduction in multiple varieties, we investigate claims of typological incompatibility of vowel harmony and reduction, the phonological status of reduction, the nature of height features and phonological rules, and hybrid structure that emerges in language contact. A number of previous claims about Bulgarian and Turkish phonology are refuted.

 

 

 

5 Lexical accent, morphological structure, and illusion of complexity

Ksenia Bogomolets

University of Auckland

 

Lexical Accent (LA) systems are particularly interesting for the theories of the morphophonological interface because they potentially can be sensitive to both morphological and phonological factors. In this talk, I consider the following bias, longstanding in the theory and descriptions of LA:

  • Morphological Complexity Bias

Lexical Accent systems require access to morphological structure, and thus may be inherently more complex than systems with phonologically predictable accent.

I argue that (i) requiring access to morphological structure is not the norm among LA systems, but rather is a typologically rare exception, and (ii) when access to morphological information is required, only a very limited amount of such information is available to the accent computation.

As an example of the Morphological Complexity Bias, I consider a LA system of a UtoAztecan language Choguita Rarámuri (CR). CR has been previously analyzed as a LA system (Caballero 2008, 2011; Caballero & Carroll 2015). Notably, it has been argued that the LA system of CR involves complex interactions of morphology and phonology, cf. (2):

(2) Morphology-dependent LA in CR

(a) Root accents are favored over suffix accents;

(b) Only suffixes closest to the root can assign accent;

(c) Special accent assignment rules are required in particular morphological environments.

(Caballero 2008, 2011; Caballero & Carroll 2015)

I argue that none of the previously identified morphology-dependent properties of the LA in CR (2) holds true. Instead, I propose that all the stress patterns in the language can be captured with no access to morphological structure, requiring only the following:

(3) Morphology-independent LA in CR

(a) A trisyllabic left-aligned stress window;

(b) A second-syllable Default;

(c) A LA competition rule whereby in cases of accent competition, the leftmost accent wins.

This talk thus provides evidence for reevaluating the role of morphological structure in LA systems and suggests that such a role might be considerably smaller than traditionally assumed.

References.

Caballero, G. (2008). Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) phonology and morphology (Doctoral dissertation). University of California, Berkeley.

Caballero, G. (2011). Morphologically conditioned stress assignment in Choguita Rarámuri. Linguistics, 49(4), 749- 790.

Caballero, G., & Carroll, L. (2015). Tone and stress in Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) word prosody. International Journal of American Linguistics, 81(4), 457-493.

 

6 Acoustic correlates of initial and final stress in Udmurt

Lena Borise & Ekaterina Georgieva

Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics

 

In this paper, we investigate the prosodic realization of stress in Udmurt (Uralic, Permic), in minimal pairs consisting of (i) indicative verbs (prs.3sg) and (ii) imperative verbs (imp.2sg/pl). According to the existing descriptions, Udmurt has fixed final stress [1], as manifested e.g. by indicatives, but imperatives have initial stress instead. The phonetic and phonological nature of this contrast has not been investigated instrumentally, except for a small-scale study in 1980 [2].

Our production experiment targeted minimal pairs formed by di- and trisyllabic verbs (total n=172). All test items were embedded in carrier phrases and controlled for syllable shape (CV), vowel height (low, mid, and mixed high/mid; the latter is due to morphological restrictions), and information structure (focused vs. non-focused). Six native speakers of Udmurt (5F, 1M, 20-40 y.o.) participated in the experiment. The sound files were manually annotated in Praat [3]; statistical analysis was performed in R [4].

The results show that stressed initial syllables in imperatives carry high f0 values, which we analyze as a pitch accent H*. Stressed final syllables in indicatives either carry a high f0 target or a fall in f0, which we analyze as H* or (H+) L*, respectively. Focused contexts carry the same f0 contours but have higher overall f0 values than non-focused ones. Vowel duration consistently cues initial but not final stress. Vowel quality, as manifested by formant properties, systematically marks final but not initial stress. At the same time, individual speakers varied in their use of stress cues: three speakers relied mainly on duration, three relied on vowel quality, and one on both cues.

We conclude that final stress in Udmurt is mainly cued by vowel quality, initial stress by vowel duration, and both carry intonational pitch targets, with indicatives allowing for more types of pitch accents than imperatives; individual speakers may preferentially use a subset of these cues.

 

References

[1]          V. I. Lytkin and T. I. Tepliashina, “Fonetika,” in Grammatika sovremennogo Udmurtskogo jazyka [A grammar of contemporary Udmurt], vol. I, P. N. Perevoshchikov, Ed. Izhevsk: Udmurtskoe knižnoe izdatelstvo, 1962, pp. 7–58.

[2]          V. N. Denisov, “Foneticheskaja xarakteristika udarenija v sovremennom udmurtskom jazyke,” 1980.

[3]          P. Boersma and D. Weenink, Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. 2021. Accessed: Mar. 25, 2021. [Online]. Available: http://www.praat.org/

[4]          R Core Team, R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.R-project.org/

 

 

7 Individual differences and the morphology-phonology interface:

Stress placement in complex English words

Tammy Ganster, Trier University

 

Stress variability in English complex adjectives has received little empirical attention (Trevian

2003, 2007 being exceptions) and formal theoretical accounts proposed thus far face serious

challenges. Stratum-based accounts (e.g. Kiparsky 2005, Fudge 1984) are problematic in that

they predict less variability than is actually observed (Arndt-Lappe & Sanz 2017) and cannot

explain variation within the same word (e.g. ádmirable ~ admírable). Other accounts identify

a heavy presuffixal syllable as a predictor for stress shift (Bauer, Lieber & Plag 2013; Trevian

2007) but concede this effect is inconsistent (/ˈænəlaɪzəbl/ ~ /ænə’laɪzəbl/). Likewise, stress

perception in complex words is another potential influence on production outputs but remains

underexplored. Alternative accounts have recently emphasized the influence of processing

factors (Bermúdez-Otero 2012, Stanton & Steriade 2021), but have abstracted away from

differences between individual speakers.

This paper will present a multivariate statistical analysis of 11,000 observations of 36

different –able, –ory and –ive derivatives from a combined production-perception experiment

conducted with over 140 native speakers of British English. In addition to a reading task

(production) and an imitation task (perception), participants completed a vocabulary size test

(Coxhead, Nation & Sim 2015) and a morphological sensitivity task to test for individual

differences. I argue that processing-based dual-route models(Hay 2001, 2003; Bermúdez-Otero 2012) explain stress variability in English complex adjectives best. In these accounts,

morphological transparency is crucial for predicting the processing route chosen and thus also

the resulting stress pattern. Stress is preserved when a base outnumbers its related derivative

and vice versa. The present paper confirms the central importance of individual differences in

stress assignment and will shed light on the relationship between these differences and

individual processing strategies. This finding is expected given that language attainment is

individual (Dabrowska 2015) and we must assume that speakers have individual frequencybased representations.

 

References:

Arndt-Lappe, S., & Sanz, J. (2017, June 21). Stress Variability in English -able and -ory

Adjedctives: Markedness, Faithfulness, and Usage. 11th Mediterranean Morphology

Meeting, Nicosia, Cyprus.

Bauer, L., Lieber, R., & Plag, I. (2013). The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology.

Oxford University Press.

Bermúdez-Otero, R. (2012). The architecture of grammar and the division of labour in

exponence. In J. Trommer (Ed.), The morphology and phonology of exponence (pp. 8–

83). Oxford University Press.

Dabrowska, E. (2015). Individual differences in grammatical knowledge. In E. Dabrowska &

  1. Divjak (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 650–668). De Gruyter Mouton.

Fudge, E. (1984). English Word Stress. G. Allen & Unwin.

Hay, J. (2001). Lexical frequency in morphology: Is everything relative? Linguistics, 39(6),

1041–1070.

Hay, J. (2003). Causes and Consequences of Word Structure. Routledge.

Kiparsky, P. (2005). Paradigm Uniformity Constraints.

https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/LexConservatism.pdf

Stanton, J., & Steriade, D. (2021). Markedness drives base selection: Experimental evidence.

The Twenty-Eight Manchester Phonology Meeting, Manchester, England.

Trevian, I. (2003). Morphoaccentologie et processus d’affixation de l’anglais. Peter Lang.

Trevian, I. (2007). Stress-neutral endings in contemporary British English: An updated

overview. Language Sciences, 29, 426–450.

 

 

  1. How experience with high and low accents affects the cue weights in stress processing: Evidence from exposure-test paradigms using eye-tracking

Katharina Zahner-Ritter (University of Trier), Sophie Kutscheid (University of Konstanz), Bettina Braun (University of Konstanz)

 

Listeners tend to interpret high-pitched syllables as stressed [1, cf. 2]. We know, however, far too little about why listeners display this ‘high-pitch bias’, although underlying mechanisms are essential for models of cognition [3]. To account for the high-pitch bias, Kutscheid*, et al. [4] recently suggested the amount of experience with high- vs. low-pitched accents to determine in how far f0 is used as a cue to word- and sentence-stress perception: They exposed German listeners to either high- vs. low-pitched accents, afterwards having them rate the position of word- or sentence-stress (between-subjects). Results showed that listeners displayed the expected high-pitch bias, but, importantly, this bias increased after exposure to high-pitched accents (even when spoken by different speakers than in exposure). The current series of experiments is designed to test whether the effect of experience extends to online-processing. Previous eye-tracking studies have demonstrated that high-pitched unstressed syllables were temporarily interpreted as stressed in German, leading to the erroneous activation of a cohort competitor with a different stress pattern, e.g., Libero [ˈliːbero] ‘sweeper’ when hearing Libelle [liˈbɛlə] ‘dragonfly’ with a high-pitched unstressed first syllable, as in H+L* [5]. The activation of competitors (Libero) was reduced when listeners had been exposed to utterances with exclusively low-pitched accents prior to the actual eye-tracking study, both for the same and different speakers [6]. Hence, exposure to low-pitched accents led to a (speakerindependent) re-weighting of f0 as a stress cue in online-word recognition. We are currently testing whether competitor activation increases, as compared to a condition with no or lowpitched exposure [6]. Our approach is directly relevant for cross-linguistic modelling of cue weighting in stress perception (given that languages differ in occurrence-frequency of high- vs. low accents [7-9]), and contributes to the debate of whether models of word recognition need to take experience-based mechanisms into account [10, 11]. Reference List

[1] Fry, D. B., „Experiments in the perception of stress,“ Language and Speech, vol. 1, pp. 126-152, 1958.

[2] Gordon, M. and Roettger, T., „Acoustic correlates of word stress: A cross-linguistic survey,“ Linguistic Vanguard, vol. 3, 2017.

[3] Norris, D. and Cutler, A., „More why, less how: What we need from models of cognition,“ Cognition, p. 104688, 2021.

[4] Kutscheid*, S., Zahner-Ritter*, K., Leemann, A., and Braun, B., „How prior experience with pitch accents shapes the perception of word and sentence stress,“ Language, Congnition, Neuroscience, (* = shared first authorship), 2021.

[5] Zahner, K., Kutscheid, S., and Braun, B., „Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical stress,“ Journal of Phonetics, vol. 74, pp. 75-95, 2019.

[6] Zahner, K., Kutscheid, S., and Braun, B., „Towards unravelling the source of the bias for high pitch in stress processing: Evidence from an exposure-test paradigm using eyetracking,“ presented at the Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum (P&P2020), Trier, Germany, 2020.

[7] Dainora, A., „Modeling intonation in English: A probabilistic approach to phonological competence,“ in Laboratory phonology VIII, Goldstein, L., Whalen, D., and Best, C., Eds., ed Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, pp. 107-132.

[8] Leemann, A., Swiss German intonation patterns. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2012.

[9] Smith, R. and Rathcke, T., „Dialectal phonology constrains the phonetics of prominence,“ Journal of Phonetics, 2020.

[10] Schweitzer, K., Calhoun, S., Schütze, H., Schweitzer, A., and Walsh, M., „Relative frequency affects pitch accent realisation: Evidence for exemplar storage of prosody,“ in 13th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (SST) Melbourne, Australia, 2010, pp. 62-65.

[11] Arndt-Lappe, S., „Towards an exemplar-based model of stress in English noun-noun compounds,“ Journal of Linguistics, vol. 47, pp. 549-585, 2011.

 

 

9 Pupillary responses to (un-)predictable word stress: Evidence from Turkish

Pinar Uzun and Karolina Broś

University of Ankara & University of Warsaw

 

Turkish has predictable word stress on the final syllable of a prosodic word (e.g., nafaka [na.fa.ká] ‘alimony’), and exceptional penultimate (e.g., parola [pa.ró.la] ’password’) and antepenultimate (e.g., karyola [ká.rjo.la] ‘bedstead’) stress. Previous research has shown that shifting the stress to an incorrect position causes difficulties in stress processing (Domahs et al. 2013). It remains to be seen, however, whether these difficulties arise in response to changes in all Turkish stress patterns and whether they are sensitive to syllable structure. To address these questions, we designed two studies focused on the pupil dilation response (PDR), a measure used as a proxy of cognitive load.

We examined changes in pupil size with an EyeLink 1000 eye-tracker system. Thirtysix native speakers of Turkish listened to trisyllabic Turkish words. In Experiment 1, we used 30 CV.CV.CV words with a canonical final stress (e.g. da.ki.ka ‘minute’) and 30 words with penultimate stress, pronounced with final, penult and antepenult stress each (a 2 × 3 design). In Experiment 2, we added a syllable weight factor by using CVC.CV.CV words from each of the three stress types (e.g. ten.ce.re ‘saucepan’), with stress shifts to each of the other syllables (a 3 × 3 design).

The results of LME models run in R, with a time window between 700-1300 ms, i.e.

starting from stimulus offset, show that, contrary to previous studies, changes from exceptional stress to a default final position do not cause increased cognitive processing. Instead, we see the opposite: a significantly higher PDR in final stress words incorrectly pronounced as antepenults (t = 2.086, p = 0.04), see figures. The non-linear dynamics of pupil dilation in response to stress shift are currently being investigated by means of a growth curve analysis.

 

 

10 Word stress in European Portuguese L2 acquisition by Bulgarian learners

Vesela Chergova,

Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski

 

The paper focuses on the word stress in the European Portuguese language (PE) and the assimilation of its functions by native speakers of Bulgarian (BG) who study the PE in a learning environment (Selinker 1972, Best & Tylor 2007, Mennen 2015).

The lexical word stress is characteristic for both PE (L2) and BG (L1). The PE word stress can distinguish different grammatical forms (esta / está, comeram / comerão, etc.), and different lexical contents (médico / medico, máquina / maquina) as well as the BG word stress can do (ходи [ʼxɔԁi] / ходи [xuʼԁi], вълна [ʼvʊlnɒ] / вълна [vʊlʼna]). The PE and BG word stress, generally speaking, has many similarities in terms of acoustic parameters, mobile positioning, rhythm, unstressed vowel reduction, phonological function, intonational phrases, information, or emotional focus of the utterance (Andreeva, Barry & Koreman n/d, Barbosa 2019, Pereira 2020, Boyadzhiev & Tilkov 1997, Daskalova 2007, Patseva 2010). The adopted hypothesis is that Bulgarian students studying Portuguese have all the conditions and advantages (Peperkamp, Vendelin & Dupoux, 2010) to master the PE stress models with success.

The paper investigates the errors in the functional acquisition of PE word stress by Bulgarian students, based on six speech imitation recordings (as per Barbosa, 2019: 77) made with Praat. Students repeatedly listen to the conversation from track 10, text № 1 (Espada, 2006: 21), which is played for learning purposes by speakers of the PE and serves as control record. Its content was pre-analyzed in class, students have access to the text version and enough time to listen and practice the oral reproduction of the dialogue. Two male speakers and four female speakers aged 19-20 were registered. The recordings were created after eight weeks of studying the PE in a learning environment, with a weekly classroom workload of 17 school hours (Level A1).

 

References

[1]       Andreeva, B., Barry, W., Koreman, J. (n.d.). The Bulgarian Stressed and Unstressed Vowel System. A Corpus Study: https://www.academia.edu/20906764/The_Bulgarian_Stressed_and_Unstressed_Vowel_System._A_Corpus_Study  (accessed 05 September 2021).

[2]       Barbosa, Pl. A. (2019). Prosódia. São Paulo, Parábola.

[3]       Best, C., M. D. Tyler (2007). “Non-native and second-language speech perception” – Bohn, O.-S., Munro, M. J. (Eds.). Language experience in second language speech learning: In honor of James Emil Flege. Amsterdam, J. Benjamins, pp. 13-34.

[4]       Espada, Fr. (2006). Manual de fonética – exercícios e explicações. Lisboa, LIDEL.

[5]       Mennen, I. (2015). “Beyond segments: towards an L2 intonation learning theory (LILt)” –Delais-Roussarie, E., Avanzi, M. and Herment, S. (Eds.). Prosody and languages in contact: L2 acquisition, attrition, languages in multilingual situation. Berlin, Springer Verlag, pp. 171 – 188.

[6]       Peperkamp, Sh., Vendelin, I., Dupoux, E. (2010). “Perception of predictable stress: A cross-linguistic investigation”. – Journal of Phonetics, vol. 38, n. 3, pp. 422-430.

[7]       Pereira, I. (2020). “Acento de palavra”. – Gramática do Português, III vol. (org. E. Paiva Raposo, E., Bacelar do Nascimento, M. F., Coelho da Mota, M. A., Segura, L., Mendes, A., Andrade, A. (Eds). Lisboa, Calouste Gulbenkian, pp. 3399-3425.

[8]       Selinker, L. (1972). “Interlanguage”. – International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (IRAL). 10:3, pp. 209-231.

[9]       Boyadzhiev, T.,  D. Tilkov (1997). Fonétika na bálgarskiya knizhóven ezík. Veliko Tarnovo, Abagar. [Бояджиев, Т., Тилков, Д. (1997). Фонетика на българския книжовен език. Велико Търново, Абагар.]

[10]     Daskalova, D. (2007). Aktsént i semántika. Shumen, Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Konstantin Preslavski”. [Даскалова, Д. (2007). Акцент и семантика. Шумен, Университетско издателство „Епископ Константин Преславски“.]

[11]     Patseva, M. (2010). Za aktséntnata óblast na bálgarskoto slóvno udarénie, Elektronno spisanie LiterNet, n. 9 (130). [Пацева, М. (2010). „За акцентната област на българското словно ударение“. – Електронно списание LiterNet, № 9 (130), 21 September 2010: https://liternet.bg/publish26/mirena-paceva/akcentnata.htm (accessed 05 September 2021).]

 

 

11 Some aspects of the prosodic behavior of prefixes in the Bulgarian language

Mirena Patseva,

Sofia University

 

The paper explores the variable prosodic behavior of prefixes in the Bulgarian language (BL) in the framework of the morphology-prosody interface. It is assumed that morphemes are accentually prespecified as marked or unmarked (Revithiadou 1999, Revithiadou Lengeris 2016). The aim of the study is to identify the accentual characteristics of prefixes and to outline the factors they are sensitive to. The source of the study was a corpus of prefixed words derived by the Official orthographic dictionary of BL and frequency dictionaries. Among the filters revealed by the analysis are metrical regularities, the word structure, and the lexical class (Minkova 2008: 27). Verbal prefixes in general are associated with grammatical function. Attaching a prefix (e.g. pre-) to an imperfective verb in BL (ˈpisha ‘write’) modifies the lexical meaning (preˈpisha ‘rewrite’) and transforms the verb into a perfective aspect without influencing stress. So, verbal prefixes are accentually unmarked, adjoined outside the stress domain (Hyman 2008: 327). An initial post-lexical strengthening can appear in cases of stacked prefixes (ˌpred-raz-po-lozhenie ‘predisposition’).

Prefixes can be stressed in limited cases attached to nouns (ˈpraˈbaba ‘grandmother’), adjectives (ˈvazzeˈlen ‘greenish’), and adverbs (ˈpredoˈstatačno ‘more than enough). The reason for the double accentuation might be historical: diachronically prefixes originate from prepositions that received stress under the Vasiľev-Dolobko’s law attested in Middle Bulgarian.

The most productive prefixes are light syllables (do-, za-, nа-, о-, pо-) which do not imply resyllabification (prе.pо.rǎ̀.kа ‘recommendation’) and retain their formal integrity (Georgieva 2013, Boyadzhiev 1999: 238) as uncohering morphemes. The independent status of the prefixes raises the question of recursion which is precluded by the Strict Layer Hypothesis (Selkirk 1986, Nespor and Vogel 1986). The version of the Weak Layering theory (Ito and Mester 2013: 38) may be more appropriate as it allows prosodic adjunction to multiply the levels of the prosodic structure.

 

References

Boyadzhiev 1999 Savremenen Balgarski ezik, IK P. Beron

Georgieva, Tsvetelina 2013, Inovatsionni protsesi v balgarskata imenna prefikstsia. Sofia: Avangard Prima

Hyman, Larry M. 2008. Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of words, with special reference to Bantu. Linguistics, 46(2): 309–350.

Ito and Mester 2013 Prosodic subcategories in Japanese, Lingua, 124, pp. 20-40.

Marina Nespor, Irene Vogel. 1986. Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

Revithiadou, Anthi and Lengeris, Angelos (2016) One or many? In search of the default stress in Greek. In: Heinz, Jeffrey and Goedemans, Rob and van der Hulst, Harry, eds. Dimensions of Phonological Stress. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 263-290

Revithiadou, Anthi. 1999. Headmost Accent Wins: Head Dominance and Ideal Prosodic Form in Lexical Accent Systems. (HIL/LOT Dissertation, 15.) The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.

Selkirk, Elisabeth 1984. Phonology and syntax: the relation between sound and structure. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.,

 

 

 

12 Non-cyclic suffixes and clitics in Bulgarian

Gueorgui Hristovsky

==

In this presentation I will argue that there are some non-cyclic suffixes in Bulgarian, i. e. Bulgarian has word formation rules that add non-cyclic suffixes. At least two phonological processes are sensitive to the internal morphological structure of words formed by the adjunction of non-cyclic affixes and clitics, or rather, these processes will be insensitive to the presence of the non-cyclic affixes and clitics: the yer vocalization and the epenthesis of [ə]. The Bulgarian definite article is viewed as a non-cyclic lexical clitic. It is clitic because it is adjunct to a given word inflected according to its position in the Nominal Syntagma, it is lexical because some lexical processes, whose domain of application is the word, are sensitive to its presence; it is non-cyclic because it is added to a word and some phonological processes are sensitive to the boundary between the word and the definite article.

In this perspective of analysis, the domain of application of yer vocalization is, in fact, the word formed by the stem and the derivational and inflectional affixes considered cyclic in Lexical Phonology (cf. Halle and Mohanan, 1985, Halle and Vergnaud, 1987 and Booij and Rubach, 1987).

The stages of passage from a clitic to affix, according to Booij (1996: 239), are as follows:

“lexical item > postlexical clitic > lexical clitic > affix”

I consider that the definite article in Bulgarian, at the synchronic level, is in the “lexical clitic” stage. Within this stage, I think, it is possible to distinguish two subtypes: cyclic lexical clitics such as, for example, the Polish lexical clitics (cf. Booij and Rubach, 1987) and non-cyclic lexical clitics, as is the case of the definite article of Bulgarian.

Regarding the endings +a (Countable Plural) and +o (Vocative) will be considered in this perspective of analysis simply as non-cyclic suffixes since they do not exhibit the behavior of lexical clitics.

 

References

Booij, G. (1996). ‘Cliticization as a prosodic integration: The case of Duch’. The Linguistic Review 13: 219-242.

Booij, G. e Rubach, J. (1984). ‘Morphological and prosodic domains in Lexical Phonology’. Phonology Yearbook 1: 1-28.

Halle, M. e Mohanan, K. P. (1985). ‘Segmental phonology of modern English’. Linguistic Inquiry 16: 57-116.

Halle, M. e Vergnaud, J.-R. (1987). An Essay on Stress. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

 

 

13 Russian verbal stress retraction, a bigger picture

Ora Matushansky,

CNRS,

 

 

 

14 The phonetics of sentence-level stress in German and English: A comparison between L1 and L2 productions

Angela James (University of Konstanz) and Katharina Zahner-Ritter

(University of Trier)

 

For second language (L2) learners, acquiring native-like prosody in the L2 is challenging [1]. While the intonation languages German and English are very similar in the prosodic marking of prominence, the fine phonetic detail varies, e.g., in terms of compensation strategies [2] and tonal alignment [3]. Here, we study the fine phonetic detail in the realization of different pitch accent types, focusing on the interplay between pitch and intensity (cf. [4]). Productions by German L2 speakers (L2-S) of English are compared to those by British speakers (L1-S).

 

In Experiment 1, we tested the contribution of intensity in high- vs. low-toned accents (H* / L*) on trisyllabic target words (S(trong)W(eak)W(eak), e.g., elephant) for H*-accents in declaratives compared to L*-accents in polar questions (reading task). In Experiment 2, we tested the use of intensity in WSW words when pitch peak and accented syllable align (L+H*, medial-peak) or mismatch (H+L*, early-peak, imitation task). In both experiments, the dependent variable was a ratio of the intensity in the vowel of the first or second syllable, respectively, divided by the overall intensity of the word. Results showed an interaction between speaker group and condition in both experiments; however, in Experiment 1 (H* vs. L*), the effect of condition was bigger for L2-S than L1-S while in Experiment 2 (L+H* vs. H+L*) the effect of condition was bigger for L1-S than L2-S, suggesting that pitch and intensity are more closely linked for L1-S than for L2-S while Experiment 2 suggests the reverse. We are currently analysing L1 productions in both experiments to reconcile this asymmetry. This will help us to unravel whether the asymmetry may reflect methodological differences in the experiments or, alternatively, have to do with the occurrence frequency of pitch accent types [5-7], i.e., the more infrequent the more marked and over-articulated.

 

References

[1] Grice, M. and Baumann, S., „An introduction to intonation – functions and models,“ Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs, vol. 186, p. 25, 2007.

[2] Grabe, E., „Pitch accent realization in English and German,“ Journal of Phonetics, vol. 26, pp. 129-143, 1998.

[3] Atterer, M. and Ladd, D. R., „On the phonetics and phonology of “segmental anchoring” of F0: evidence from German,“ Journal of Phonetics, vol. 32, pp. 177-197, 2004.

[4] Niebuhr, O., Perzeption und kognitive Verarbeitung der Sprechmelodie. Theoretische Grundlagen und empirische Untersuchungen [Perception and cognitive processing of intonation. Theory and empirical investigations]. New York: Mouten de Gruyter, 2007.

[5] Dainora, A., „Modeling intonation in English: A probabilistic approach to phonological competence,“ in Laboratory phonology VIII, Goldstein, L., Whalen, D., and Best, C., Eds., ed Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, pp. 107-132.

[6] Grabe, E., „Intonational variation in urban dialects of English spoken in the British Isles,“ in Regional variation in intonation, Gilles, P. and Peters, J., Eds., ed Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004, pp. 9-31.

[7] Peters, B., Kohler, K., and Wesener, T., „Melodische Satzakzentmuster in prosodischen Phrasen deutscher Spontansprache – Statistische Verteilung und sprachliche Funktion [Meldodic sentence accent patterns in prosodic phrases of German sponteneous speech – Statistical distribution and linguistic function],“ in Prosodic structures in German spontaneous speech (AIPUK 35a), Kohler, K., Kleber, F., and Peters, B., Eds., ed Kiel: IPDS, 2005, pp. 185-201.

 

15.Nicolas Royer-Artuso

(UQAC & IFEA)

Based on the study of Vowel Harmony (VH) and stress, Dobrolovsky (1976) proposed that Turkish is an isolating language. His analysis of the stress system accounts for the irregularities, but the author is forced to resort to a syntactic explanation, and this, because he presupposes certain features for this language, presuppositions accepted in one way or another by all linguists working on Turkish[1]:

1) morphemes are the basic units, concatenated to form complex words;

2) morphemes are invariants in deep structure;

3) VH is a phonological process (a consequence of 1 and 2);

4) stress is dependent on the phonological component, is regular in agglutinating languages[2] (a consequence of 1).

Kabak & Vogel (2011) provide a detailed study of phonological exceptionality in Turkish for stress and VH. Their conclusion is that we have to prespecify what is exceptional in relation to accentual and harmonic rules as defined traditionally. Their 2001 paper offers „a unified analysis of regular and irregular stress in Turkish that crucially depends on [their] definition of the Phonological Word” (K&V2001: 315).

We therefore see again that the notions/definitions of 1) stress, 2) VH and 3) (phonological) word overlap in the explanations.

Both of these very different studies –in terms of the theories exploited and the way the

argumentation is carried– emphasize the centrality of the definition of word. They both rely on an analysis based on morphemes that are concatenated to form complex words, the outputs of which are handled by the phonological component[3].

.

In my contribution, I want to offer a different analysis that will take as a premise the conclusion of Revithiadou & al. (2006) stating that stress refers to the morphosyntactic categories of lexical/morphemic items. Based on Royer-Artuso [2013] (2015) and (2015), I will show how a formal word-based/exemplar approach to Turkish stress is capable of handling the data.

 

References

Dobrovolsky, M. 1976. Is Turkish an Agglutinating Language? Montreal Working Papers in

Linguistics, vol. 6. p. 87–101.

Ford, A., R. Singh and G. Martohardjono. 1997. Pace Panini: Towards a Word-Based Theory of Morphology. New York, Peter Lang.

Göksel, A. and C. Kerslake. 2005. Turkish: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.

Green, A. D. 2007. Phonology Limited. Potsdam, Universitäts Verlag.

Hurch, B. 1996. Morphoprosody: Some reflections on accent and morphology. in R. Singh, ed.

Trubetzkoy’s Orphan. Amsterdam, John Benjamins. p. 189-221.

Inkelas, S. 1999. Exceptional Stress-Attracting Suffixes in Turkish: representations versus the

grammar. in K. René, H. van der Hulst and W. Zonneveld, eds. The prosody-morphology

interface, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. p. 134–187.

Kabak, B. and I. Vogel. 2001. The Phonological Word and Stress Assignment in Turkish.

Phonology, vol. 18. p. 315–360.

Kabak, B. and I. Vogel. 2011. Exceptions to Vowel Harmony and Stress in Turkish: cophonologies or prespecification?. in S. J. Horst, H. Wiese, eds. Expecting the Unexpected:

Exceptions in Grammar. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter. p. 59– 94.

Kamali, B. et D. Ikizoglu. Against Compound Stress in Turkish. Proceedings of ICTL 16,

METU. (https://www.academia.edu/6524047/Against_compound_stress_in_Turkish).

Kornfilt, J. 1997. Turkish. London: Routledge.

Lewis, G.L. 2000. Turkish Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pöchtrager, M. A. 2010. Does Turkish Diss harmony? Acta Linguistica Hungarica, vol. 57, no

  1. p. 458–473.

Revithiadou, A., H. Kaili, S. Prokou and M.-A. Tilipoulou. 2006. A Compositional Approach to Turkish Stress, in S. Yagcioglu, ed., Advances in Turkish Linguistics. Istanbul: Dokuz Eylul Yayinlari (https://www.academia.edu/1785519/A_compositional_approach_to_Turkish_stress)

Royer-Artuso, N. [2013] 2015. Is Turkish a Tongue-Twister?, in K. Dziubalska-Kolaczyk and J. Weckwerth, eds. In memoriam of Prof. Rajendra Singh: Papers from a special session at the 44th Poznan Linguistic Meeting, September 2013, Poznan, Adam Mickiewicz University Press. p. 41-84.

Royer-Artuso, N. 2016. Contact, Change and the Passage from Allomorphy to Suppletion.

Linguistic Atlantica Vol. 35, 2.

Sezer, E. 1981. On Non-Final Stress in Turkish. Journal of Turkish Studies, vol. 5, p. 61–69.

Singh, R. 1990. Vers une Théorie Phonotactique Générative. Revue Québécoise de Linguistique, vol. 19, no 1. p. 131-163.

 

16 Stress in «HARASS»: situation in modern British English.

Key words: word stress, British/American variant of the English language

Golovina Arina,

Dubna State University, Russia.

In the field of word-stress studies, there is currently a supposition that British and American word-accentuation tendencies have begun to converge [1].

The current project presents a comparative analysis of the word-stress structure of the word «harass» in a number of dictionaries in order to identify the prescriptively correct pattern of stress for the British and American variants.

In addition, the article describes the results of an auditory and electronic acoustic study of 35 examples of the word «harass» by British English speakers, aimed at identifying the used word-stress structure of the lexical unit under consideration.

The analyzed examples have been collected on www.youglish.com, a tool for searching the pronunciation of words on YouTube videos. The electronic acoustic analysis has been conducted with PRAAT.

The results of the comparative analysis of dictionary entries demonstrates that nowadays dictionaries tend to add both variants of pronunciation to British ones. However, there is still a number of dictionaries, that lean towards distinguishing first and second syllable stress between British and American. While analyzing, we took into consideration both printed (Oxford, Cambridge, Collins, Macmillan, Longman) and online dictionaries (Oxford, Cambridge, Collins, Macmillan, Longman, Merriam-Webster and Wordreference).

The results of the auditory and electronic acoustic study show that out of all analyzed audio samples only 9% stress the first syllable of «harass».

Conclusions

Conclusions of the conducted research reflect the current pronunciation tendencies and may be used in English pronunciation courses in order to introduce a more up-to-date pronunciation of the word «harass». As the analysis show, despite the prescribed by dictionaries British stress model, native speakers are more likely to use the American variant.

Literature:

  • Бурая Е. А. Акцентуация в британском и американском вариантах ан-глийского языка: конвергенция или дивергенция? // Фонетика и фоно-логия дискурса. – М. : Рема, 2010. – С. 23–41. – (Вестник Моск. гос. лингвист. ун-та, вып. 1 (580). Сер. Языкознание).

 

 

 

СНИМКИ ОТ НАУЧНИЯ ФОРУМ НА

SLE

 

 

Откриване на форума

 

 

 

 

Специализираният семинар. На подиума са Бистра Андреева и Мирена Пацева

 

В хода на работата

Презентация на Митко Събев, University of Cambridge, Spectral and Durational Unstressed Vowel Reduction: An acoustic study of monolingual and bilingual speakers of Bulgarian and Turkish

 

 

[1] 1 See any comprehensive grammar of Turkish, e.g. Kornfilt 1997; Lewis 2000; Göksel & Kerslake 2005,

as well as the literature on Turkish phonology and morphology. In this proposal, I only refer to literature

highlighting very directly the points I want to build on for this contribution.

[2] 2 And therefore, the exceptions prove that syntax is involved: stress gives us indications as to whether or not a „morpheme“ is part of the word and, if not, that it is in fact another word for the syntax.

[3] 3 As are the overwhelming majority of proposals in the literature. But see Royer-Artuso [2013] 2015 and

Royer-Artuso 2015 for arguments pointing to the necessity of a word-based approach to Turkish.