Accent

Abstract

Abstract In many languages particular syllables have special prominence relative to others. This prominence, which is the result of variations of amplitude or pitch of voiced phones (or spans of phones), goes by the name accent. Traditionally one speaks of two species of accent: stress accent and pitch accent (alternatively, musical accent), depending on which element is thought to be the more conspicuous in distinguishing tonic (more prominent) from atonic (less prominent) syllables. But the phonetics of accent are not adequately captured in this scheme. For example, although it is widely taken as obvious that English has a stress accent, in fact the word accent of English is phonetically complex: the two most important marks of tonic syllables are (1) sharply changing pitch (usually but not invariably downward)-thus pitch, more specifically pitch change, is central to this supposed ‘stress accent’; and (2) a notable lengthening of the tonic vowel. Prolongation of tonic vowels is notoriously associated with a corresponding reduction or loss of unaccented (short) vowels. An opinion sanctified by tradition is that stress accent CAUSES such reductions and losses; but Finnish, Hungarian, and Czech, for example, all have a strong stress accent on the first syllable of a word but maintain a full array of vowel contrasts in posttonic syllables, which shows that vowel weakening is not an inevitable concomitant of stress accent. The converse is probably more nearly true, namely that accent defined by pitch changes alone is not likely to result in phonetic differences between atonic and tonic vowels.