Abstract

Previous studies on phonetic realization of compounds in Turkish have typically examined prosodic accounts of lexical stress; however, evidence for phonetic features is relatively sparse. This study investigates phonetic implementation of lexical stress in Turkish noun-noun compounds by measuring acoustic correlates of compounds vs. phrases and existing vs. novel compounds. In Experiment 1, noun-noun compounds and their phrasal contrasts (e.g., [da.ná.bur.nu] ‘mole cricket’ vs. [[da.ná][bur.nú]] ‘nose of a calf’), in Experiment 2, existing and novel compounds were acoustically measured by using existing vs. novel pairs (e.g., [da.ná.bur.nu] vs. [ke.dí.bur.nu]). Results for Experiment 1 showed a clear phonetic tendency that distinguished compounds from their phrasal counterparts. The model revealed significant main effects for intensity, duration, pitch values, and a strong interaction between position (left vs. right) and prosodic type (compound vs phrase). In Experiment 2, even though novel compounds are not lexicalized parts of a language, results from novel compounds revealed a similar stress assignment on the pitch, intensity, and duration of existing compounds. Significant interaction effects were observed for acoustic correlates between position (left vs. right) and compound type (existing vs. novel). Findings obtained from this research might contribute to revealing the basic phonetic aspects of the compound stress in Turkish, and results may lay the groundwork for future research.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call