Duration and fundamental frequency patterns in Brazilian Portuguese polysyllabic words.

Abstract

Brazilian Portuguese polysyllabic words are said to have secondary stress (SS). There is no clear consensus, though, on how SSs are assigned and what the acoustic correlates for SSs are. We analyzed a corpus of read speech in order to gain some insight on those two issues. The corpus’ target words have 2 to 4 pre‐stressed syllables with primary lexical stress falling either on the last or penultimate syllable. Target words appeared in initial, medial, or final position on carrier sentences. Previous works showed that duration and F0 are the main correlates of stress marking in BP with a marginal contribution of vowel quality and spectral emphasis. Statistical analysis of normalized (z‐scored) syllable and vowel‐to‐vowel duration show no evidence of binary alternation. Duration increases exponentially up to the stressed syllable. A Praat script was used to determine global and local F0 maxima and minima. Lexically stressed syllables have F0 peaks associated with them. There is at most one F0 peak on the pre‐stressed syllable chain. Peaks tend to be higher in 4‐pre‐stressed‐syllable words and be absent in 2‐pre‐stressed‐syllable words. Target word position do not have a significant effect on duration contour shape and on F0 peak placement.