Antepenultimate Stress Research Articles

Weight effects and the parametrization of the foot: English versus Portuguese

This article explores the possibility that even though English and Portuguese present similar stress patterns on the surface, the two languages may be formally different: whereas English offers strong evidence for the foot, Portuguese does not. We present new data on the relationship between syllable weight and antepenultimate stress in both languages. We experimentally show that weight effects in English are consistent with an analysis of stress that employs feet. Weight effects in Portuguese, in contrast, are not optimally accounted for by a foot-based analysis. Sonority effects captured in our experimental data from Portuguese further question the role that the foot plays in this language, but not in English. Additional evidence for the foot in English comes from word minimality constraints, which are never violated in the language, unlike in Portuguese, where violations are commonly observed both in the lexicon and in derived words.

Contact-induced variation in Tetun Dili phonology

The paper analyzes the Portuguese influence on Tetun Dili phonology, which can be can be identified at different levels. The phonemic inventory of Tetun Dili has been enriched via borrowing of several consonantal phonemes, triggering an increase in the number of phonological contrasts. Portuguese influence also accounts for the phonetic realizations of a number of consonantal and vocalic phonemes, with some allophonic rules extended even to words belonging to the native stock. Furthermore, the massive influx of Portuguese loanwords has greatly increased the number of permissible onset clusters, and lexical borrowings from Portuguese have led to the occurrence of antepenultimate stress. Finally, Portuguese influence also accounts for the considerable inter-speaker variation. These contact-induced phenomena are shown to correlate with the following factors: knowledge of Portuguese; the exo-normative vs endo-normative orientation of speakers in the case of Portuguese, i.e. towards European or Brazilian Portuguese vs. the East Timorese variety of Portuguese.

Weight and final vowels in the English stress system

This paper presents both dictionary evidence and experimental evidence that the quality of a word's final vowel plays a role in assigning main stress in English. Specifically, a final [i] pushes main stress leftwards – three-syllable words ending with [i] have a strong tendency to take antepenultimate stress. This pattern is compared with the Latin Stress Rule for English, according to which words with heavy penultimate syllables should have penultimate stress. Both pressures are shown to be productive in experiments. Two analyses of the final-[i] generalisation are tested, one using the ‘cloned’ constraint Non-finFt[i], and one using the ‘parochial’ constraint Antepenult[i], which directly penalises [i]-final words which do not have antepenultimate stress. Although it is has less typological support, Antepenult[i] is argued for on the grounds that it correctly predicts participants' behaviour on words with both a heavy penult and a final [i], which are extremely rare in the lexicon.

Stress assignment in reading aloud in Spanish

AbstractCorrect stress assignment is a requirement for fluent reading in alphabetic languages. This study focuses on two nonlexical mechanisms at the core of stress assignment. In particular, the use of a default stress pattern (e.g., penultimate stress) and the Spanish stress mark. In Experiment 1, participants read aloud words and pseudowords with different stress types (on the antepenultimate or the penultimate syllable), and with or without a stress mark. Results showed longer reaction times (RTs) for words and pseudowords with antepenultimate stress. However, as words with antepenultimate stress always have a stress mark, it could be argued that stress type differences could be due to the presence of the stress mark. In Experiment 2, using a priming procedure participants read aloud words and pseudowords in pure versus mixed stress blocks. Again, words and pseudowords with antepenultimate stress were read slower (longer RTs), suggesting that previous differences were due to stress mark rather than stress type. These results indicate that processing stress marks is cognitively demanding when reading in Spanish.

Loanword phonology in Modern Hebrew

Abstract The phonology of loanwords often differs from the phonology of native words in various aspects. These differences are evident in the prosodic structure and even the segmental inventory. The differences between the loanword and native phonology, however, are not necessarily stable, and it is often the case that what originated as phonological structures in loanwords which were illicit in the native vocabulary eventually overrode the native norm, bringing about diachronic change to the phonology of the native words. Hebrew is no exception in this respect. The stress system of loanwords differs from that of native words, with the latter’s system undergoing changes inter alia due to the effect of loanwords (e.g. ante-penultimate stress, immobile stress patterns). The licit syllable structure inventory of native Hebrew words has been expanded to include loaned structures (e.g. complex codas, triconsonantal structures), and the phonemic inventory of Hebrew now includes several consonants originating in loanwords (e.g. ʒ and d͡ʒ).

When lexical statistics and the grammar conflict: Learning and repairing weight effects on stress

In weight-sensitive languages, stress is influenced by syllable weight. As a result, heavy syllables should attract, not repel, stress. The Portuguese lexicon, however, presents a case where weight seems to negatively impact stress: antepenultimate stress is more frequent in light antepenultimate syllables than in heavy ones. This pattern is phonologically unexpected and appears to contradict the typology of weight and stress: it is a case where lexical statistics and the grammar conflict. Portuguese also contains gradient, not categorical, weight effects, which weaken as we move away from the right edge of the word. In this article, I examine how native speakers’ grammars capture these subtle weight effects, and whether the negative antepenultimate weight effect is learned or repaired. I show that speakers learn the gradient weight effects in the language, but do not learn the unnatural negative effect. Instead, speakers repair this pattern and generalize a positive weight effect to all syllables in the stress domain. This study thus provides empirical evidence that speakers may not only ignore unnatural patterns, but also learn the opposite pattern.

The Delayed Naming Task, Phonological Preparation Time, and the Three-syllable Stress Window in Spanish

The current study presents the delayed naming task as an effective tool for testing the robustness of phonotactic constraints. A delayed naming task was employed to test for quantity sensitivity among nonwords in Spanish. Results reveal a robust effect of stress modulation by syllable weight as evidenced by differential rates of error between penultimate diphthongs and monophthongs in nonwords marked for antepenultimate stress. Items containing phonotactically illicit diphthong/stress combinations were also shown to improve significantly over time, showing that the cognitive constraints on proscription can be overcome with sufficient preparation time. Rising and falling diphthongs were also shown to restrict antepenultimate stress differentially, replicating the findings of Shelton, Gerfen, and Gutiérrez Palma (2012) and revealing sensitivity to gradient weight distinctions in the lexicon. These findings offer further evidence in favor of nuanced quantity sensitivity in Spanish and demonstrate the utility of the delayed naming task to view phonotactic processing over time.

Syllable weight in monolingual and heritage Spanish

AbstractThis study presents two experiments employing a naming task that test the modulation of stress assignment by syllable structure in Spanish. The first replicates the findings of a previous study in which words containing arguably heavy penultimate diphthongs provoke higher error rates than putatively light monophthong controls when marked for antepenultimate stress. This result is interpreted as support for quantity sensitivity in the language. This experiment also replicates a subtler finding of differential patterning between rising and falling diphthong in their interaction with Spanish stress, suggesting gradient sensitivity to patterns in the lexicon. The second experiment presents the results of an identical task with Spanish-English heritage speakers in which the general effect of syllable weight is replicated, while the effect of diphthong type does not emerge. An analysis of error types suggests that varying levels of reading proficiency among heritage speakers may have led to the lack of the latter result, while still revealing sensitivity to frequencies in the lexicon. The combined results are offered as further evidence of quantity sensitivity among both monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish and provide further data in the understudied subfield of heritage phonotactics.

Antepenultimate stress in Spanish: In defense of syllable weight and grammatically-informed analogy

Spanish has a contrastive stress system with three major possibilities: antepenultimate, penultimate, and final stress. While penultimate and final stress are to some extent predictable, a major point of contention in the literature is whether antepenultimate stress assignment is rule-governed (Harris 1983; Roca 1991; i.a.). By examining different analogical and grammatically-informed models and their predictive power in capturing experimental data, I show that a Maximum Entropy model (Hayes & Wilson 2008) that includes syllable weight in its lexical representations is the best predictor of antepenultimate stress assignment. In doing so, I also dispute the claim that the trill in Spanish is a geminate tap (Harris 1983), and provide support for its status as a singleton consonant.

The acoustics of primary and secondary stress in Modern Hebrew

Abstract This study investigates the acoustic realization of primary and secondary stress in polysyllabic words in Modern Hebrew (MH). The study focuses on the production of target words embedded in a meaningful carrier sentence, with three primary stress types: ultimate, penultimate and antepenultimate stress. We measured the duration, intensity and F0 of each vowel. Results show that duration is the sole reliable cue for stress in MH, and that there is no phonetic realization of secondary stress in MH, and therefore no true surface alternating pattern. These findings may have phonological implications regarding the prosodic organization of language, and provide a solid basis for future studies on the perception of primary and secondary stress by speakers.

Stress avoidance in hiatus

Multiple languages avoid stressing the first of two vowels in hiatus. Evidence that this avoidance has a perceptual basis is shown by the results of a perceptual study. Antepenultimate and penultimate stress versions of 40 three-syllable Norwegian nonce words were played to English listeners, who were asked to identify whether stress was on the first or second syllable. It was found that listeners had significantly more trouble correctly identifying penultimate stress in cases of hiatus (that is, where the penultimate vowel was immediately followed by the vowel of the final syllable). Steriade (2012, 2017) has proposed that Interval Theory accounts for the lack of stress in this position because the weight domain is too small to fulfill the requirement to bear stress. While this account is compatible with the perceptual account proposed here, an examination of the possible weight domains of the stimuli used finds a problem for Interval Theory. The onset of a stressed syllable is found to significantly lengthen, but because Interval Theory takes this consonant to be part of the preceding, unstressed interval, interval durations are out of sync with the relative prominence of the weight domains in a word.

The timing of pre-nuclear pitch accents in Persian

This paper examines the phonetic realization of rising pre-nuclear pitch accents in Persian. In a first experiment, the alignment of f0 valleys and peaks in pre-nuclear pitch accents was analyzed in controlled speech materials as a function of the syllable structure (open vs. closed) and vowel type (short vs. long) of the accented syllable. The results revealed that in words with antepenultimate stress, both the L and the H tones are anchored to specific segmental landmarks irrespective of syllable structure or vowel type. In particular, the L is consistently aligned with the onset of the accented syllable, and the H is placed with similar consistency in the vicinity of the first post-accentual vowel. In a second experiment, the variability in the timing and scaling of L valleys and H peaks was examined as a function of the proximity of the word boundary and of the following accent. The results revealed that while the alignment of the L was unaffected by changes in stress conditions, H peaks were significantly retracted as the syllable approached the end of the word. However, the proximity of the following accent did not produce a significant effect on H alignment. In addition, no significant differences were found on L and H scaling in different stress or tonal crowding conditions. Overall, the results contribute to a growing body of evidence that in the absence of upcoming prosodic pressure, the alignment of pitch targets is specified relative to segmental positions. A comparison between these findings and empirical findings from other languages reveals fine phonetic differences of segmental anchoring that are less likely to be interpreted in terms of distinct association-based phonological representations, and suggests that some aspects of segmental anchoring need to be explained in terms of continuous language-specific alignment rules.

Effects of probabilistic phonology on the perception of words and nonwords

ABSTRACTAlthough listeners have knowledge about both categorical and probabilistic phonological patterns, it is not clear if knowledge of probabilistic patterns affects speech processing. One such pattern in English is that words ending in /i/ (e.g. rémedy) are more likely to have antepenultimate stress than penultimate stress (e.g. spaghétti). In the current study, participants extended this trend to ratings of novel words (e.g. bakati). Further, ERPs revealed that real words that violate this trend elicit an early negativity 280–380 ms after onset compared to words that observe this trend. These results indicate that probabilistic phonology interacts with lexical access. More specifically, they suggest that extra processing power is needed to recognise the stress pattern of trend-violating words because of competition between the expectations of the phonological grammar and lexical encoding of trend-violating patterns.

Stress properties of Greek compounds: Psycholinguistic considerations

AbstractTheoretical accounts of Greek compounds argue for a close relation between their stress properties and their underlying structure. Compounds that preserve and receive stress at the same position as their second constituent are analyzed as stem-word constructions, while those that receive antepenultimate stress are viewed as belonging to the stem-stem category. Using an auditory lexical decision task, we examine the effect of stress change on the processing of compounds in the light of existing theoretical linguistic accounts. Although our experimental results do not reach statistical significance, we believe that they are informative of the cognitive status and role of stress in compound processing. Finally, they relate to existing theories of compounding in Greek and reflect the complex interaction of the psycholinguistic effects of stress and the structural properties of these constructions.

Stress in the Absence of Morphological Conditioning: An Experimental Investigation of Stress in Greek Acronyms

Greek is a morphology-dependent stress system, where stress is lexically specified for a number of individual morphemes (e.g., roots and suffixes). In the absence of lexically encoded stress, a default stress emerges. Most theoretical analyses of Greek stress that assume antepenultimate stress to represent the default (e.g., Malikouti-Drachman & Drachman 1989; Ralli & Touratzidis 1992; Revithiadou 1999) are not independently confirmed by experimental studies (e.g., Protopapas et al. 2006; Apostolouda 2012; Topintzi & Kainada 2012; Revithiadou & Lengeris in press). Here, we explore the nature of the default stress in Greek with regard to acronyms, given their lack of overt morphology and fixed stress pattern, with a goal of exploring how stress patterns are shaped when morphological information (encapsulated in the inflectional ending) is suppressed. For this purpose, we conducted two production (reading aloud) experiments, which revealed, for our consultants, first, an almost complete lack of antepenultimate stress and, second, a split between penultimate and final stress dependent on acronym length, the type of the final segment and the syllable type of the penultimate syllable. We found two predominant correspondences: (a) consonant-final acronyms and end stress and (b) vowel-final acronyms and the inflected word the vowel represents, the effect being that stress patterns for acronyms are linked to the inflected words they represent only if enough morphonological information about the acronym’s segments is available to create familiarity effects. Otherwise, we find a tendency for speakers to prefer stress at stem edges.

Spanish Rhotics: More Evidence of Gradience in the System

The present study examines the nature of the Spanish rhotics experimentally, investigating the possibilities that the trill is best understood as deriving from an underlying geminate or that the tap and trill may be separate phonemes. In order to explore these two theories, a behavioral task was designed exploiting the absence of native words in Spanish containing a final trill onset that carry antepenultimate stress. The geminate view of Spanish rhotics argues that this pattern is absent because it is prohibited by the synchronic phonological grammar, while two-phoneme approaches consider it a diachronic gap. A nonword naming task tested the representation of this nonextant word shape by comparing trisyllabic nonce forms containing trills to other controlled sequences in theoretically banned (antepenultimate) and permitted (penultimate) stress conditions. The results of the experiment are interpreted as evidence against a geminate analysis of Spanish taps and trills. The data also suggest gradience in phonemic categorization and are considered within an emergent conception of the lexicon.

Stress as a proclitic in Modern Greek

Virtually all past tense forms of the Greek verb are characterised by antepenultimate stress. This fact is problematic for standard views of the prosody–morphology interface in Greek, for which it is usually assumed that inflectional categories cannot uniquely determine the stress pattern of a word. Furthermore, antepenultimate stress is not otherwise known as an effect of affixal morphology. It is proposed that we can understand the behaviour of past tense if we assume that past tense is a proclitic consisting of a segmentally empty foot only. It is shown how this analysis fits in with our current morphosyntactic and phonological knowledge of the structure of the Greek verb.

A CONCORDÂNCIA VERBAL COM A PRIMEIRA PESSOA DO PLURAL EM PANAMBI E PORTO ALEGRE, RS

This is part of a project about several related morphosyntactic changesin Brazilian Portuguese using data from VARSUL data base. Two cities in RS areconsidered: Porto Alegre, the capital, and Panambi, a bilingual community. Thesample included 32 interviews stratified according to sex, age, and level of formaleducation. The variable investigated is verbal marking with first person pluralsubjects. The variants are: standard agreement (-mos ending) and twononstandard forms: zero and /s/ deleted -mo inflections. Supposing two differentvariable rules, we made three separate Varbrul analyses: a)contrasting the threevariants; b) contrasting zero inflection with both -mos and -mo endings takentogether; and c)contrasting only -mos and -mo endings. The distribution of thevariants was: 53% of standard tokens, 34% of -mo endings and only 13% of zeroinflection. Results showed different factor groups associated with zero inflectionand nonstandard -mo inflection, supporting the idea of having two separatevariable rules. The level of formal education turned out to be the only significantfactor group in common for both nonstandard forms. It was also highlighted in thethree-way comparison. Zero inflection was favoured only when the target wordhad antepenultimate stress, suggesting avoidance of this stress pattern. Thebilingual community had an effect only on zero inflection.

Stress “deafness” in a Language with Fixed Word Stress: An ERP Study on Polish

The aim of the present contribution was to examine the factors influencing the prosodic processing in a language with predictable word stress. For Polish, a language with fixed penultimate stress but several well-defined exceptions, difficulties in the processing and representation of prosodic information have been reported (e.g., Peperkamp and Dupoux, 2002). The present study utilized event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the factors influencing prosodic processing in Polish. These factors are (i) the predictability of stress and (ii) the prosodic structure in terms of metrical feet. Polish native speakers were presented with correctly and incorrectly stressed Polish words and instructed to judge the correctness of the perceived stress patterns. For some stress violations, an early negativity was found which was interpreted as a reflection of an error-detection mechanism. In addition, exceptional stress patterns (=antepenultimate stress) and post-lexical (=initial) stress evoked a task-related positivity effect (P300) whose amplitude and latency is correlated with the degree of anomaly and deviation from an expectation. In contrast, violations involving the default (=penultimate stress) did not produce such an effect. This asymmetrical result is interpreted to reflect that Polish native speakers are less sensitive to the default pattern than to the exceptional or post-lexical patterns. Behavioral results are orthogonal to the electrophysiological results showing that Polish speakers had difficulties to reject any kind of stress violation. Thus, on a meta-linguistic level Polish speakers appeared to be stress-“deaf” for any kind of stress manipulation, whereas the neural reactions differentiate between the default and lexicalized patterns.

Harmony is Myopic: Reply to Walker 2010

Harmony is Myopic: Reply to Walker 2010