Phonetic Correlates of Word and Sentence Stress

Abstract

This chapter reviews the acoustic correlates and perceptual cues of linguistic stress at the word and sentence level, mainly in English and other Germanic languages. A first theme is whether word and sentence stress can be ordered monotonically along the same phonetic scale, rather than involving different acoustic parameters and perceptual dimensions. Other topics are the phonetic reflexes of the Alternation Principle (‘NoClash’) and of changes in information structure as well as the effect of sentence stress on the temporal organization of words and phrases. The work on non-Germanic languages raises the issue of the weighting of stress correlates and its possible interaction with language-specific structure. Two hypotheses are evaluated: (i) languages will mark the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables more forcefully as word stress location is less predictable and (ii) a stress correlate will be less important if it is involved elsewhere in the phonology of the language.