Heavy Syllables Research Articles

Word Stress in Santri Utterance: A Comparative Analysis of Acoustic Phonetics

Although word stress in Arabic is not phonemic, proper use can minimize communication ambiguity. This study aims to analyze the production of word stress by students of Arabic as a second language (L2) and compare it with native speakers. This comparative study, involved six second-year students of Madrasah Aliyah as research samples. The research data were collected using listening, recording, and note-taking techniques. Then the research data were analyzed using Praat version 6.4.01 to find the stress accurately based on fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity level. The results showed that most L2 learners produced stress correctly on words with light syllables, but incorrectly on heavy and super heavy syllables. On the other hand, the form of word pronunciation also affects stress errors. Words characterized by super heavy syllables and a pause form are typically pronounced with weak stress. In addition, stress errors occur in syllables with double consonants where L2 learners do not apply good enough stress so that they sound like single consonants. These errors occur due to their mother tongue's different word stress systems. The findings are expected to positively impact L2 learners and teachers, by highlighting pronunciation issues, particularly concerning word stress.

Boundary-driven downstep induced by syntax-prosody mapping.

This study investigates whether downstep in Japanese is directly triggered by accents. When the pitch height of a word X is lower after an accented word (A) than after an unaccented word (U), X is diagnosed as downstepped. However, this diagnosis involves two confounding factors: the already lowered F0 before X and phonological phrasing. To control these factors, this study contrasts genitive and nominative case markers and adjusts measurement points. Eight native speakers of Tokyo Japanese participated in a production experiment. The results show six key findings. First, a structure-dependent F0 downtrend was observed in UX. Second, higher F0 peaks with larger initial lowering were observed after accents with a nominative case marker compared to those with a genitive case marker, suggesting a boosting effect by boundaries. Third, larger initial lowering was observed in AX compared to UX, contradicting the notion that X is more compressed in AX due to downstep. Fourth, the paradigmatic difference in F0 height between AX and UX decreases when F0 of X is increased, supporting that boundaries trigger downstep. Fifth, downstep is not physiologically constrained but is phonologically controlled. Finally, the blocking of initial lowering in heavy syllables is not phonological but rather an articulatory phenomenon.

Foot-shift and disyllabification in the history of Chinese

Abstract This paper argues that the Chinese language has undergone a foot-shift from the Old Chinese monosyllabic foot to a Modern Chinese disyllabic foot. It will be shown that the natural simplification of Old Chinese syllables has caused the foot-shift, resulting in disyllabification. The disappearance of bimoraic feet in Old Chinese has resulted from the loss of consonantal codas, including codas of consonant clusters, which has led to the disappearance of heavy syllables, as well as super-heavy syllables. In other words, this foot-shift can be explained as a compensatory transformation of a heavy Old Chinese dimoraic monosyllable to a pair of light monomoraic disyllables. One way of understanding this evolution is that disyllabification of feet in Modern Chinese is a compensatory mechanism to maintain foot complexity.

Coding Local Weight Sensitivity in Wergaia

Wergaia, an extinct language in Australian Wimmera region, exemplifies a generalized trochee language wherein heavy syllables generally do not bear stress, except when in final position in an odd-parity word to preserve a regular rhythmic alternation. This paper reviews the Wergaia stress pattern and provides a program in Python to model its local weight sensitivity in metrical parsing.

The Effect of Prefixation on Syllable Structure in Najdi Arabic

This study investigates the effect of prefixation on the syllable and syllabification in Najdi Arabic. It mainly addresses the role of prefixation on the syllable in this variety of Arabic, providing a prosodic representation of it within the context of rule-based phonology. The paper provides a review of the phonological processes that deal with prefixation phenomena in Najdi Arabic, whose domains of application are somewhat subject to syllabification processes and the syllable structure. To achieve this, the paper discusses the three types of prefixation in Najdi Arabic: (a) nominal prefixes, i.e., the definite article /ʔal/ and prepositional prefixes (predominantly fi- ‘in’, and bi- ‘in/at’), (b) the agreement-related prefixes, i.e., verbal prefixes and (c) the adverbial prefix /ʔib-/ ‘with’, which is prefixed to the host noun and changes its grammatical category to an adverb. The results show that each type of prefixation has its own functions, which are essentially related to the type of the host it attaches to. For instance, the prefix /ʔib-/, which is the Najdi Arabic adverbial marker, is a stress-bearing morpheme, given that it is a heavy syllable on its own, which attaches to the initial position at the very beginning of its nominal host.

Sound of Quantitative Metres in Medieval Hebrew Poetry

Abstract The conventional view of quantitative metres in medieval Hispano-Hebrew poetry confuses vowels and syllables. This is because it was syllable structure, rather than vowel typology, that produced the quantitative oppositions. Vocalic shewa was not a furtive but a regular short vowel; its syllable was light because it was not closed by a consonant. Heavy syllables were formed by closing consonants, replaceable by a long vowel, as in Arabic and other languages. Arabic metres could be used in Hebrew with no modification of their phonological basis. However, the quantitative prosody of Arabic poetry was the same as in Qurʾānic recitation, whereas its application to Hebrew contradicted the accentual prosody of the Bible. This appears to be the reason for the controversy surrounding the introduction of Arabic metrics into Hebrew poetry. Quantitative metres require only the focus on the articulatory structures to become audible. Musical durations and accents can corroborate the metre, but they can also be non-related without compromising metre perception.

The Phonology of the Definite Determiners in Yemeni Tihami Arabic

This paper analyzes the phonology of the definite determiner (DET) of two Yemeni Tihami Arabic dialects. The underlying Det for one dialect (the b-dialect) is /b-/: [θoor] ‘ox’- [b-θoor] ‘the ox’, and /m/ for another dialect (the OCP m-dialect): [m-θoor] ‘the ox’. Although the determiner is underlyingly different in both dialects, it fully assimilates to the following word-initial consonant if it is labial, creating a word-initial geminate. On the surface, the onset geminate behaves differently in both dialects. I present an analysis that treats them the same except for their underlying representation and the ranking of two constraints. Both dialects present further complications involving these onset geminates. In the OCP m-dialect, labial assimilation is always optional, and if the word-initial syllable is light, as in /firag/ ‘teams’, gemination is optional ([f-firag] ~ [m-firag]), but if it is heavy, gemination is resolved by epenthesis: /m-fiiraan/ → [ʔaf.fii.raan] ‘the mice’. This is explained if we assume all geminates, even word-initial ones, are moraic: in that case, epenthesis is compelled by a ban on extra-heavy syllables. In the b-dialect, labial assimilation is obligatory because of a high-ranking Ocp-Lab. However, gemination in heavy syllables is only optional: [f-faanuus] ~ [ʔif.faa.nuus], ‘the lantern’.

Rethinking the Metre of Parzival: Iambic Verse for a Trochaic Language

AbstractThe Middle High German (MHG) prosodic foot is uncontroversially considered to be trochaic, a fact which has traditionally led scholars to assume a preference for trochaic metre in poetry of the MHG Classical Period. However, given the trend elsewhere in mediaeval Europe (even in trochaic languages) to emulate French lyrics and compose verse in iambic metre, the uncritical assumption of a trochaic metre in all MHG poetry seems inadequate. A close examination of Parzival, an early thirteenth‐century grail romance by Wolfram von Eschenbach, suggests that the traditional analysis is not only insufficient but counter to the linguistic evidence. This paper argues for the first time that Parzival was in fact composed in iambic tetrameter, based on a close analysis of the rhythmic alternations within lines and the quantity and foot structure of line‐final syllables. Halle & Keyser's (1966) principles for iambic metre were used to produce a taxonomy of possible line structures in Parzival and the dominance of the wswswsws pattern, beginning on a weak beat and ending on a strong, offers convincing evidence in favour of iambic metre. The remaining lines can be neatly categorised as iambic by allowing feminine rhyme (with an extrametrical schwa syllable) or the construction of monosyllabic feet from a single heavy syllable. This analysis is further corroborated by the consistently iambic structure of line‐final feet, as well as the foot structures avoided by the poet, identified according to the weight of the final, penultimate and antepenultimate syllables. The present analysis has the advantage of explaining the various patterns of alternating prominence in the metre of Parzival much more consistently than the complex system advocated by the traditional literary view.

Metrical strength in Persian poetic metres

In determining the metrical structure of quantitative poetic metres, heavy (i.e. long) syllables are usually associated with metrically strong positions. In this study, examining the case of Persian metres, I argue that the metres must be treated as temporal patterns in music, where research on rhythm perception has shown that the metrical strength of an event is not directly determined by the inter-onset interval following it but sensitive to the overall arrangement of the attack points. To identify metrically strong positions, I introduce a different method based on the performance practices of participants in the poetic tradition. The strength hierarchy is then used to offer constituency trees for the metrical forms and classify them. The structures identified for metrical forms are different from those suggested in previous accounts of Persian metres, in that they allow incomplete constituents at the left edges of metres. Building upon this general framework, a set of constraints chiefly based on well-known universal rhythmic tendencies is introduced and the Persian metre inventory is accounted for as emerging from the interaction of these constraints.

Lithuanian Syllable: The Hierarchy of Syllable Constituents and Syllable Weight

The article aims to establish the hierarchy of Lithuanian syllable constituents and determine how syllables should be interpreted in terms of syllable weight. The empirical data based on 311 000 syllables show that the variety of consonants in the onset is more significant than in the coda. A vowel and a succeeding approximant form the nucleus of a prosodic syllable, which shows strong coherency between a nucleus and a coda. Therefore, a CVC syllable is interpreted as [syllable Onset [rhyme Nucleus Coda]]. The division of Lithuanian syllables into light and heavy can be based on the realization of pitch accent, and it fully coincides with the traditional classification of long and short syllables in Lithuanian linguistics. Short syllables are light, their nucleus is a short vowel, and the number of consonants in the onset and the coda is unimportant. Such syllables account for almost half of all syllables in the database of this research (45%). Long syllables are heavy, and their nucleus may consist of long vowels (30%), diphthongs (12%), or mixed diphthongs (13%). When stressed, heavy syllables are pronounced in two ways: traditionally known as “acute” and “circumflex”. The stress is not dependent on the syllable weight, as both light (short) and heavy (long) syllables can be stressed. However, it has been observed that heavy (long) syllables are stressed more often than light (short) ones. Heavily stressed syllables constitute 25%, while light stressed syllables comprise 11% of all the syllables in this research database.

Weight sensitivity and prominence in Laurentian French

Main prominence is conventionally described as being assigned to the final syllable of phrases in French, but previous quantitative and qualitative work has shown that this is not always the case. Using corpus data from Laurentian French (Saguenay, Quebec), we test the hypothesis that prominence is preferentially assigned to heavy syllables. Our results demonstrate that this is indeed the case, with both codas and heavy vowels attracting prominence away from final syllables, particularly when the final syllable is open. We infer two distinct types of prominence: lexical and phrasal. Lexical prominence, which is marked using duration and amplitude, variably attracts phrasal prominence, which is marked using pitch. We interpret these findings as indicating that the location of phrasal prominence is sensitive to syllable weight and that this prominence is best formally expressed as a pitch accent due to its attraction to lexically prominent syllables.

Moraic tone-bearing units in Kabiye

This article provides evidence that the mora, rather than the syllable, is the tone-bearing unit in Kabiye, an Eastern Gurunsi Gur language of Togo. After presenting the phoneme inventory and a brief overview of the tone system, the concept of phonological weight is introduced in order to precisely characterise the mora and the syllable in this language, as well as the relationship between them. Two observations provide evidence in favour of the mora as the tone-bearing unit: first, contour tones are licenced on heavy syllables but not on light ones; second, tonal processes are sensitive to a unit smaller than the syllable, such that the second constituent of a heavy syllable operates with a degree of independence relative to the first. These observations are explored in four phonological domains: association of the LHL tone pattern, association of two-tone patterns, L tone spreading, and vocalic elision. Two post-lexical processes — contour realignment and HLH plateauing — provide putative evidence of the syllable as tone-bearing unit, but even in these cases, a moraic account is ultimately judged to be preferable.

Layered feet and syllable-integrity violations: The case of Copperbelt Bemba bounded tone spread

We identify evidence supporting two amendments to standard metrical theory: the inclusion of layered feet, and the allowance of syllable-integrity violations, where a foot parses some, but not all, of a syllable’s constituents. The evidence comes from a High tone spreading process attested in Copperbelt Bemba (CB), which as reported by Bickmore and Kula (2013) et seq., occurs over a ternary domain. In quintessentially metrical fashion, the domain is sensitive to the presence and position of heavy syllables. Thus, we argue that metrical theory should take the CB data into account.CB ternary spreading can occur in contexts with an abundance of unparsed syllables on either side of the domain. We argue that this property is problematic for ‘Weak Layering’ accounts using binary feet (McCarthy and Prince 1986; Hayes 1995), which revolve around the minimal presence of unparsed syllables. We propose an alternative account using layered feet (Martínez-Paricio and Kager 2015), specifying an inner quantity-sensitive iamb and a strictly monomoraic adjunct. We show that a principled characterization of the spreading domain is that tone associates to all and only footed moras. We argue that a metrical analysis provides a more principled account of the data than can be achieved by Bickmore and Kula’s purely autosegmental analysis.Finally, we show that foot-based accounts of CB ternary spreading predict syllable-integrity violations (SIVs), where parsing consumes only the first of two tautosyllabic moras. Contrary to the common view that SIVs are universally disallowed, we embrace this result and put it in a typological context. We adopt an Optimality Theory constraint set to model SIVs (Kager and Martínez-Paricio 2018b), and extend it, paving the way for a typological investigation of SIVs.

Metathesis in Syrian Arabic: Types and Conditioning Factors

This study explores metathesis in Syrian Arabic (SyA). The data reveal two types of metatheses. Type-I is phonologically conditioned, involving at least one of the four root consonants, ʒ, f, ʕ and ћ with the fricatives (z, s), liquids (l, r) or gutturals (q/ʔ) in specific positions within the root regardless of word derivation. Type-II is morpho-phonologically conditioned, involving Standard Arabic reflexive Pattern VIII, (ʔi)ftaʕal, that resulted historically from generalized metathesis of reflexive-t with C1 of the original Proto-Aramaic reflexive Pattern (ʔi)tfaʕal. It occurs in SyA as a reversed metathesis of Pattern VIII with doubling of C2, tfaʕʕal. This reverse metathesis occurs when the root consonant adjacent to reflexive-t is the fricative (s), pharyngeals (ʕ, ħ) or liquids (l, r). While metathesis results from strictly ranking the Optimality Theoretic LINEARITY constraint lower than LEFT-ANCHOR(t), geminating C2 is explained in terms of prosodic weight of the syllable to maintain stress assignment of the input and verb grammaticality and/or semantic correspondence with the input. Thus, the constraints IDENT(Stress), WEIGHT-BY-POSITION must dominate INTEGRITY and *CODA to allow gemination that contributes moriac weight to the penultimate syllable to receive priority stress over final bimoriac heavy syllables.

An Overview of Lithuanian Intonation: A Linguistic and Modelling Perspective

Intonation is a complex suprasegmental phenomenon essential for speech processing. However, it is still largely understudied, especially in the case of under-resourced languages, such as Lithuanian. The current paper focuses on intonation in Lithuanian, a Baltic pitch-accent language with free stress and tonal variations on accented heavy syllables. Due to historical circumstances, the description and analysis of Lithuanian intonation were carried out within different theoretical frameworks and in several languages, which makes them hardly accessible to the international research community. This paper is the first attempt to gather research on Lithuanian intonation from both the Lithuanian and the Western traditions, the structuralist and generativist points of view, and the linguistic and modelling perspectives. The paper identifies issues in existing research that require special attention and proposes directions for future investigations both in linguistics and modelling.

Effect of linguistic factors on the occurrence of stuttering-like disfluency among Japanese-speaking preschool children who stutter

ABSTRACT This study aimed to investigate the linguistic factors involved in stuttering among Japanese-speaking preschool children. The participants included 10 Japanese children who stutter, with a mean age of 5 years and 9 months. Speech samples comprised spontaneous conversations of the participants with their parents for about 20 minutes. We compared the percentages of the occurrence of stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) at the word and sentence levels, using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The results showed no significant differences in SLDs based on syllable structure when comparing light and heavy syllables and comparing consonants and vowels in the initial position of each content word. SLDs occurred more frequently in the initial than non-initial position of words and in longer rather than shorter words. Additionally, SLDs occurred more frequently in sentences that contained more ‘bunsetsu’ (a kind of linguistic unit in Japanese). Our study is the first to show that both word and sentence-level factors could contribute to SLDs in preschool children who stutter in agglutinating languages, such as Japanese. This aspect is rarely reported in psycholinguistic studies based on stuttering occurrence in inflecting languages, such as English.

Syllables and Stress in Uzbek Nouns and Adjectives: With a Comparison to English and North Kyungsang Korean

This research analyses the syllables and stress placement in Uzbek nouns and adjectives. Syllables in Uzbek are divided into heavy and light to explain quantity-sensitivity in stress placement: Heavy syllables tend to attract stress. Previous studies argued that in Uzbek, stress docks on the final syllable except for loan words. However, this rule encounters exceptions. Hence, we have come up with new stress rules. Uzbek nouns and adjectives are stressed on the rightmost heavy syllable which is usually, but not always, a final syllable. In addition, if words do not contain any heavy syllables, then stress falls on the final light syllable. Furthermore, with the morpho-phonologically made superlative degree adjectives, stress falls on the word-initial heavy syllable. Finally, we will make a three-way comparison between the Uzbek stress system, the English stress system, and the North Kyungsang Korean tonal system, identifying the similarities and differences among them.

Phonological aspects of al-Issa Arabic, a Bedouin dialect in the north of Jordan

This study offers an account of selected key phonological aspects of al-Issa Arabic, spoken in three villages in al Mafraq: Ad-Dafyana, Mansiyat al-Gublan and Um As-srab. Forty suitable participants plus four language consultants were recruited. The dialect has a number of distinguishing features that make it stand out from the rest of Bedouin Jordanian Arabic dialects, e.g. the Bani Saxar dialect (Palva 1980), Bani Ḥassan dialect (Irshied 1984), Abbādi dialect (Sakarna 1999), and Wadi Ramm Arabic (Mashaqba 2015). These features include the unlimited affrication of ∗k, the realization of the palato-alveolar/j/ as [y] in all word positions (yaʔyaʔa phenomenon), and the unconditioned retention of Classical Arabic diphthongs ∗aw and ∗ay in all contexts. In terms of syllable structure, the core syllable types observed are: CV, CVC, CVV, CVVC, CCVVC, CVC1C1, and C1C2VVC. There is a strong ban against C1C2C3 and C1C2 coda clusters in the dialect. Following Kiparsky's (2003) typological classification, the dialect is a VC-dialect where a vowel is inserted between C1 and C2 in C1C2C3 clusters. To avoid gutturals in coda positions, the dialect exhibits of the gahawa syndrome where CVG.CV underlying forms are attested as CV.Ga.CV. Stress is predictable in the vast majority of forms and is controlled by a trochaic foot ('CV.CVC). Stress falls on the right-most heavy syllable in the last three syllables. Where a word lacks a heavy syllable, it falls on the antepenultimate, or a penultimate in two syllable words. However, stress assignment interacts with epenthesis and the gahawa syndrome: the inserted vowel attracts the main stress in the absence of an ultimate heavy syllable.

Arguments for a Privative L Tone in Northern Tepehuan

This paper proposes that Northern Tepehuan is a tonal language with just one lexical tone 'low tone' and is therefore a privative tonal system. L tone is sufficient to explain the pitch contrasts in the language and also necessary to explain the "inconsistencies" of stress assignment. Stress is normally predictable from the size of the word, from syllable-weight, and is cued by a H* intonational tone. Nonetheless, in words that do not obey the Stress-to-Weight constraint, it could be argued that stress is displaced from the heavy syllable by virtue of a high-ranked *Align(Head/Low) constraint that prohibits the placement of stress on a syllable with a lexical L. The L tone also explains why the H* intonational tone can be displaced from stressed syllables.

Junctural Alignment in Kyoto Japanese Compound Nouns

Descriptively, in Tokyo Japanese compound words whose second member measures up to four moras in length, compound accent is placed on the syllable immediately preceding or following the boundary, or "juncture," between compound members. The length of the second member of the compound determines which of the two possible syllables is accented. Kubozono (1995) proposes an analysis with a constraint which requires that compound accent be aligned with the juncture. However, Ito and Mester (2018) account for compound accent location without reference to the juncture.Kyoto Japanese compound accent placement is similar to that of Tokyo Japanese (Nakai 2002) with a crucial difference: compound accent is placed on the mora, not the syllable, immediately preceding or following the juncture. This results in a discrepancy in which compound accent is placed on the first mora of a heavy syllable in some cases and on the second mora of a heavy syllable in other cases. I demonstrate that this discrepancy makes alignment to the juncture indispensable for Kyoto Japanese and that general left and right alignment constraints relativized to three levels of recursive word (maximal, minimal, any) cannot by themselves place compound accent in the correct location in all cases.