Durational cues to stress, final lengthening, and the perception of rhythm

Anya Lunden

doi:10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4312

Abstract

Binary stress languages have a well-known asymmetry between their tolerance of initial versus final lapse; the former being extremely rare and the latter being quite common. Lunden (to appear) proposes that final lengthening plays a role in this asymmetry, as the additional inherent phonetic duration of the final syllable can contribute to the continuation of a perceived rhythm, even in the absence of actual final stress. She notes this effect of final lengthening should only be available in languages that use duration as a cue to stress. However, some languages are described as having different cues to primary and secondary stress, and it is not clear which is more important for this perceptual effect. The results of four new studies show that final lengthening contributes to the perceptual rhythm of the word even when only one level of stress is cued with duration.

Highlights

Binary stress languages have a well-known asymmetry between their tolerance of initial versus final lapse; the former being extremely rare and the latter being quite common
Among binary stress languages, we commonly find stress lapse tolerated at the right edge of the word, but not at the left edge (Kager 2001)
As discussed in the previous section, final test strings did not differ significantly between the studies. (Some of the other string types showed some significant differences, which are not discussed here.) Final test strings in the three studies that used duration as cue to at least some level of stress were all statistically significantly more likely to be categorized as “alternating” than they were in Study 2, which did not use duration to cue any level of stress (p < 0.001)

Summary

Introduction

Binary stress languages have a well-known asymmetry between their tolerance of initial versus final lapse; the former being extremely rare and the latter being quite common. As was previously found by Lunden (to appear), a final syllable that is not stressed (i.e. has the pitch and intensity of unstressed syllables) but that has final lengthening, is sufficient to frequently cause a final test string to be categorized as “alternating.” While the percent of “alternat-ing” responses for the final test strings (48.9%) is slightly lower than what was found in previous studies, we see it is both near confusability (50%) and significantly more likely to be categorized as “alternating” than final lapse strings (p < 0.001).

Results

Conclusion