Abstract
Steriade (2012) proposed intervals as a more appropriate syllable weight domain than rhymes. This study explores how interval weight cashes out as duration across word positions and compares this to a rhyme-based account. The data reported on in Lunden (2013), from native speakers of Norwegian (a language in which (C)VC syllables are heavy only non-finally) is reanalyzed with intervals. Lunden found that syllable rhymes in all three positions, if taken as a percentage of the average V rhyme in that word position, fell into a coherent pattern for weight. It is shown that interval durations allow for a similar, albeit less robust, pattern. The data from Lunden’s (2013) perception experiment that tested the correlation between increased vowel duration and listeners’ classification of syllable weight is also recast with interval durations, and the importance of the proportional increase over the raw increase, originally found for the rhyme data, is found to hold for the interval data. Thus, taking intervals as the weight domain is shown to result in reasonable durational relations between interval weights, although interval durations show less separation between some light and heavy units than the rhyme durations do.
Highlights
Steriade (2012) has proposed that weight is best calculated over intervals, which span from the beginning of a vowel through all following consonants up to the vowel
This paper examines the consequences of the first of these, and compares the durations of weight domains in non-final and final positions under a rhyme account and an interval account
Looking at (10a) we can see that taking the shortest weight domain as the baseline in all positions, as was done for the rhyme data, does not result in a consistent picture for the interval durations, as a final VC interval is large and does not pattern with the final V interval
Summary
Steriade (2012) has proposed that weight is best calculated over intervals, which span from the beginning of a vowel through all following consonants up to the vowel. Rather than a weight domain specification that produces segmental equivalence, as the two in (2) do, Lunden shows that the increase in duration of a heavy rhyme over a short vowel in the same position of the word regularly meets a proportional increase threshold.
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