Penultimate Syllable Research Articles

Utterance-final lengthening and quantity in Northern Finnish

Utterance-final lengthening in Northern Finnish was investigated using tightly controlled laboratory materials, with particular focus on its interaction with the language's single (short) vs. double (long) vowel distinction. Like many other languages, Finnish exhibited utterance-final lengthening, although the estimates of magnitudes of lengthening on final vowels varied greatly depending on the treatment of the utterance-final breathy/voiceless portion of the vowel. As has been also shown for other languages, the lengthening occurred as early as the stressed, penultimate syllable of disyllabic words and was generally progressive. Crucially, vowel quantity interacted with the lengthening in a manner consistent with a hypothesis that Finnish regulates utterance-final lengthening to preserve its quantity system. Specifically, the voiced portion (the portion that is relevant to the perception of vowel quantity) of the longest single vowel (the half-long vowel) was restricted. Additionally, double vowels were lengthened less when the vowel in an adjacent syllable was also double, suggesting syntagmatic constraints. Our results support the view that utterance-final lengthening is a universal tendency but is implemented in language-specific ways and must be learned.

How prosody correlates with syntax: An observation on Sakizaya, an endangered Formosan language

This pioneering study investigates the relationship between prosody and syntax of Sakizaya, an endangered Formosan language in eastern Taiwan. Both elicitation data and spontaneous data were collected from five informants (aged 48 to 74), in order to provide a more thorough sketch on this VSO language with clear case marking and voice systems. Preliminary results showed that in descriptive sentences, prosodic units and syntactic units do correlate with each other, depending on which of the four voices is used. (The four voices in Sakizaya: agent‐, patient‐, instrumental, and locative voices) However, once specific functions are imposed onto a sentence, they will override this "default" setting, and adopt corresponding prosodic patterns for the ease of communication. For example, in this language, the default position to receive a nuclear accent should be the ultimate syllable of a sentence; however, we observed an accent shift onto the penultimate syllable for yes/no questions, exclamations, as well as continuously progressive sentences. In negation sentences, pitch peaks are distinctively higher in the accented syllable of the negator (which posited sentence‐initially), instead of the ultimate syllable in sentence‐final position. Lastly, case markers and voice markers were found as preferred positions for speech planning and repair.

Pitch accent timing and scaling in Chickasaw

Questions in Chickasaw, an endangered Muskogean language of Oklahoma, display a transition from a high pitch accent (H*) to a low boundary tone (L%) within a three-syllable window at their right edge. The location of H* has been reported to be sensitive to the weight of the final three syllables. It falls on the final syllable if it contains a long vowel. If the final syllable has a short vowel, the pitch accent falls on a heavy penultimate syllable (CVV or CVC), and otherwise on the antepenultimate syllable. Phonetic investigation of the timing and scaling of the pitch accent in the production of Chickasaw questions by three speakers confirms these phonological patterns, but also reveals considerable variability across speakers and accent locations in phonetic aspects of pitch accent realization. H* occurs progressively earlier in accented syllables the closer the syllable is to the end of the question. This leftward shifting of the pitch accent may be viewed as an instance of tonal repulsion attributed to crowding of H* and L%. Final vowels, which support both H* and L%, are not lengthened and scaling effects on H* and L% are less consistent across speakers, suggesting that the primary means for minimizing tonal crowding in Chickasaw is through timing changes in the location of the pitch accent rather than other means such as tonal undershoot or segmental lengthening.

Lexical and default stress assignment in reading Greek

Greek is a language with lexical stress that marks stress orthographically with a special diacritic. Thus, the orthography and the lexicon constitute potential sources of stress assignment information in addition to any possible general default metrical pattern. Here, we report two experiments with secondary education children reading aloud pseudo‐word stimuli, in which we manipulated the availability of lexical (using stimuli resembling particular words) and visual (existence and placement of the diacritic) information. The reliance on the diacritic was found to be imperfect. Strong lexical effects as well as a default metrical pattern stressing the penultimate syllable were revealed. Reading models must be extended to account for multisyllabic word reading including, in particular, stress assignment based on the interplay among multiple possible sources of information.

Stress in South Conchucos Quechua: A Phonetic and Phonological Study

Both acoustic measurements and speaker perceptions demonstrate South Conchucos Quechua (SCQ) to have one of the rare “binary plus clash” stress patterns first discussed in Gordon (2002). Stress falls on alternating syllables starting with the penultimate and counting to the left, as well as on the initial syllable. Hence, stress “clash,” the stressing of two adjacent syllables, results at the beginning of words with an odd number of syllables. Consideration of both natural discourse data and elicited data proves to be essential in obtaining an accurate picture of the stress system. In the discourse data, primary stress was generally perceived to fall on the initial syllable. However, in last words of emphatic phrases, as well as in words elicited in isolation or a frame, the penultimate syllable was generally considered to be most prominent. Acoustic measurements reveal this prominence to be prosodic (nonlexical) pitch accent, phonetically distinguishable from simple primary stress.

A Duration-based Solution to the Problem of Stress Realization in Turkish

A duration-based solution to the problem of stress realization in Turkish Anne Pycha University of California, Berkeley Department of Linguistics pycha@berkeley.edu I. Introduction In this paper, I argue that the realization of Turkish stress makes crucial reference not to syllable types (such as heavy versus light), but to syllable durations. In agreement with previous work, I show that fundamental frequency (F0) acts as a primary acoustic correlate of stress in the language. Contrary to what we might expect, however, F0 contours realize themselves fully on syllables closed by a sonorant consonant (abbreviated here as CVR), but are “clipped” on syllables with long vowel nuclei (CVV). This presents a puzzle for any theory of phonological weight, whereby CVV syllables should certainly be heavier, and therefore more capable of hosting prosodic information, than CVR syllables. The puzzle resolves itself when we examine phonetic duration: the F0-carrying portion of CVV syllables is in fact consistently shorter than that of CVR syllables. Following Gordon (1999), these findings suggest that exceptions to typological tendencies in syllable weight can find a principled explanation within phonetic implementation. 2. Background Turkish has at least three ways of assigning stress (Sezer 1981, Inkelas & Orgun 1998, Inkelas 1999, Kabak & Vogel 2001, Inkelas & Orgun 2003, and references cited therein). Final stress is the default. Certain morphemes, however, condition the presence of non-final stress; an example is the negative morpheme -mA, which conditions stress on the syllable preceding itself. Place names undergo a totally different stress placement algorithm, dubbed “Sezer stress” after Sezer (1981): here, stress falls on the antepenultimate syllable if it is heavy and the penultimate syllable is light, otherwise it falls on the penultimate syllable. (1a) git-'ti-m go-P AST -1 SG ‘I went’ (1b) 'git-me-di-m go-N EG -P AST -1 SG ‘I didn’t go’ (1c) 'ankara, is'tanbul ‘Ankara’, ‘Istanbul’ In this paper, I will not consider Sezer stress, but will be concerned only with final and non-final stress. Previous researchers who have investigated the acoustic correlates of Turkish stress have concurred that F0 acts as a primary correlate (Konrot 1981, Konrot 1987, Levi 2005), but have also noted that final and non-final stress seem to get realized very differently. Konrot (1981) identified both F0 and intensity as correlates, but only in words with non-final stress. In words with final stress, he found no robust correlates at all. Levi (2005) identified F0, intensity, and duration as correlates, when averaging over words with final and non-final stress. But she too encountered the non-robustness of correlates for final stress, as revealed by her algorithm for

Towards a Comprehensive Account of the Stress of Russian Nouns Containing the Combining Form -лог

The Russian combining form -лог (English -logist/-loger/-log/-logue/-logy, French -logue, German -log(e)) ultimately goes back to the Greek -λογος, and occurs for the most part in compound nouns of a specialised (i. e. scientific or technical) nature. The initial components of such words are generally of Greek and Latin origin, and this combining form is essentially, therefore, not an integral part of Russian word formation, but, rather, occurs in compound words which are borrowed as whole units (generally from French, German, Polish and, more recently, English).2 However, from the point of view of stress, such words can be said to form a single corpus given the phonetic uniformity of their final syllable (i. e. -лог) which functions as a kind of suffix. In standard modern Russian nouns in -лог display a near uniformity of (fixed, i. e. non-mobile) stress on the penultimate syllable with a few cases of (fixed) final stress (e. g. биолог ‘biologist’, but диалог ‘dialogue’). On the synchronic level it is precisely this incomplete uniformity of stress which is of interest. In addition, on the diachronic level, historical evidence reveals that considerable change of stress has occurred in words containing -лог during the last three centuries. Two substantial analyses of the stress characteristics of words containing -лог have been made, one by Kiparsky (1962, 158–161), and the other by Superanskaja (Суперанская 1968, 152–156). Both their analyses are essentially diachronic in approach and identify an almost complete shift in the stress of such words, at least those denoting areas of human specialisation, from the final syllable to the penultimate syllable. Thus, for example, historical sources reveal that the stress of астролог ‘astrologer’ has changed from астролог in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to астролог in the twentieth century. According to Kiparsky (1962, 158–161), while the tendency towards penultimate stress has been completely generalised in the case of compound words containing the final component -граф so that no anomalies remain (e. g. фотограф ‘photographer’), and almost none in the case of -метр (e. g. барометр ‘barometer’, but сантиметр ‘centimetre’), there has been a conscious effort on the part of lexicographers to halt the progress of this same tendency with words containing -лог. Thus Kiparsky (ibid., 160) notes that for four words penultimate stress is expressly not permitted: каталог (not каталог) ‘catalogue’, минералог

A Lexical Stress Effect in Neglect Dyslexia.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of word stress location in neglect dyslexia. An assessment was made of stress assignment in reading Italian words in 13 patients with neglect dyslexia and 13 matched normal individuals. The correspondence in stress location between target and neglect errors was preserved in 9 patients. Moreover, the proportion of words with stress on the penultimate syllable was about 50% and that on the antepenultimate syllable was also about 50%. This pattern is significantly different from the distribution observed in the Italian lexicon, in which the majority of polysyllabic words are stressed on the penultimate syllable. This result cannot be expected from the application of a "regularization" strategy associated with the operation of a nonlexical reading pathway. Taken together, these findings lead to the conclusion that lexical stress is part of the lexical information preserved in neglect dyslexia.

Škrabčev umetni jezik evlalija in njegovo razmerje do latinščine

Škrabec je svojo evlalijo oblikoval kot nekak sekundarni umetni jezik. Kot osnovo za izgovarjavo je izbral klasično latinsko izgovarjavo. Besedje je določil s sistemom pretvorb latinskega in polatinjenega besedja v evlalijo. Obdržal je tudi latinsko pravilo o naglasu ter razločeval med dolgimi in kratkimi samoglasniki. Oblikoslovje evlalije razen zaimenske sklanjatve je dokaj enostavno, vendar visoko razločevalno, skladnja in besedotvorje pa se skoraj v celoti naslanjata na latinščino. S svojo evlalijo se je Škrabec vključil v tedanjo vseevropsko razpravo o možnem svetovnem jeziku.

Personal Names in Hebrew and Arabic: Modern Trends Compared to the Past

Personal names are part of any language and obey most of its general rules, whether phonological, morphological, syntactic, orthographical or semantic. The paper considers similarities and differences between names in Hebrew and Arabic as a specific lexical group within their vocabularies. We note briefly the importance of personal names for the study of these languages, and survey older and more recent names from phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. The standpoint of this comparative study is basically lexicological and sociolinguistic. Three main points are discussed, the first two of which occur only in Hebrew: 1. The stress on the name's penultimate syllable which contrasts the usual stress pattern. 2. Gender indication of the name (masculine vs. feminine). 3. Innovations in the names inventory. Both Arabic and Hebrew tend to innovate names, but due to the speakers' different cultural and social structures, the results in each language differ in several respects.

Stress assignment in syllabic structures in Xhosa and Tswana

The purpose of this paper is to show dial syllabicity occurs in both Xhosa and Tswana other than through vowels. It will further show that where laterals, liquids and nasals occur in certain environments syllabicity will occur. This will occur when heterorganic sounds are juxtaposed even where they do not occur at the penultimate syllable, a position where stress in Bantu would normally occur.

Processing Spoken Chinese: The Role of Tone Information

Vowel and tone monitoring tasks were used to investigate the role of tone information in processing Mandarin. In Experiment 1, participants monitored for a tone-plus-vowel combination (tone 2-/a/). Both existent (known) and non-existent syllables contained targets and monitoring reaction times showed faster monitoring times for existent syllable carriers. Non-target bearing existent syllables mismatched on either the vowel or the tone and showed faster responses for vowel mismatch stimuli. This finding supports a perceptual advantage for vowel information. In Experiment 2, separate vowel and tone monitoring tasks were used for target syllables that occurred phrase-finally in idiomatic (highly constraining) phrases or neutral semantic context. In the neutral context, vowel monitoring was faster than tone monitoring. In contrast, highly predictive contexts showed a tone advantage. Experiment 3 used idiomatic contexts that did or did not contain a mismatching tone in the penultimate syllable. Mismatching tones were very similar to or highly distinct from the intended tone and both tone and vowel monitoring reaction times showed graded effects based on similarity of the mismatch. A modified version of the TRACE model for tone languages that includes a separate level or representation for tones that permit graded activation and highly interconnected syllable representations is discussed.

Phonetics and phonology of main stress in Italian

Vowel duration is not contrastive in standard and regional varieties of Italian. However, vowels in stressed open syllables are longer than unstressed vowels or vowels in closed syllables. The increased duration is not equal in all positions. Most notably, the increased duration of a stressed open penultimate syllable is much greater than the duration of a stressed open antepenultimate syllable or a stressed final syllable, which has no noticeable duration increase. Nonetheless, phonological analyses of Italian have characterised length by a single rule (see for example Vogel 1986, Nespor & Vogel 1986) that lengthens non-final main stress vowels regardless of position. Phonetic studies, particularly Farnetani & Kori (1983, 1990) and Marotta (1985), pay closer attention to the duration of stressed vowels in different positions. Although their explanations of stressed vowel duration differ, the common theme is that duration differences are due to shortening vowels as a consequence of word compression or position (antepenultimate or penultimate syllable) in the word.While the phonetic approaches account for differences in duration due to shortening, the phonological approaches propose lengthening with no regard for actual duration differences. The phonetic and phonological approaches to stressed vowel duration in Italian appear to be diametrically opposed. This paper proposes that lengthening a stressed vowel is the correct characterisation of duration differences in Italian, but there is no single rule that lengthens stressed vowels.

Parametric phonology and boundary tonology in Xhosa

The fallacious practice of formulating language-particular rules whenever.solving phonological problems has pained phonologists for almost two decades. Prince and Smolensky (1993:1) duly recognise some of the most serious attempts by phunologists to constrain phonological rules; and such a large body of research, dating back to Kisseberth (1972). culminated in the advent of Parametric Phonology (Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1992) and Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993). In this paper I invoke Parametric Theory of Phonology and analyse some of the boundary tonological processes of Xhosa. In particular, I argue that a doubly-linked H tone on the penultimate and final syllables undergoes Left Branch Delinking at the right edge of a Phonological Phrase (PP), and Right Branch Delinking at the right edge of an Intonational Phrase (IP). Finally. I demonstrate that the processes referred to above are derived from a very small number of universal parameters.

Accentuation and empty vowels in Ondarroa Basque: Against the concept of phonological derivation

In Ondarroa Basque there is a lexical distinction between accented and unaccented morphemes. Words containing accented morphemes receive word-penultimate prominence. Other words are unaccented and, in medial position, surface without prominence on any syllable. Phrase-finally, lexically unaccented words receive phrase-penultimate prominence. Interestingly, certain empty vowels are counted for the assignment of phrasal prominence to lexically unaccented words, but not for the placement of lexical accents on the penultimate syllable of the word. This situation is incompatible with the traditional concept of phonological derivation. On the other hand, the facts receive a straightforward account in terms of constraints operating on surface patterns.

Análisis del sistema acentual de Ondarroa

In this paper, we offer a description and analysis of the accentual system employed in Ondarroa. Among the northern Biscayan varieties, the Ondarroa system is particularly interesting because of the high degree of opacity that it presents. Like in other western varieties, there is an underlying distinction between accentually marked and unmarked morphemes. Marked morphemes place an accent on the penultimate syllable of the word (like in Lekeitio). Lexically unaccented phrases may receive phrasal accent, which falls on the penultimate syllable of the phrase. The interplay of these rules produces the result that many underlying distinctions are often neutralized on the surface. We also present evidence for positing empty vowels which need to be computed for the assignment ofaccents at the phrasal level, but play no role in word-level accentuation.

Question marking in Hungarian: timing and height of pitch peaks

In Hungarian, the distinction between statements and yes/no questions is not expressed by lexical or syntactic means, but only by prosody. Yes/no questions have a pitch change in the penultimate syllable, regardless of whether or not the syllable is stressed. For sentences having a bisyllabic word in final position with sentence accent, there is a pitch change in the penultimate syllable both in statements and questions, so that such utterances are ambiguous with respect to their status as statement or question. An experiment was conducted with synthesized pitch contours, asking listeners to decide whether utterances sounded like a statement or a question. The results show that the timing of the pitch peak in the penultimate syllable, the peak height, the shape of the pitch change and the presence of an additional pitch peak in the beginning of the utterance affect its interpretation as a statement or a question. The results are discussed in terms of the perceptual and phonological properties of the utterances and the phonetic implementation of the phonological properties.

Intraword Timing Relations in Thai after Unilateral Brain Damage

The present study examined temporal characteristics of monosyllabic, bisyallabic, and trisyllabic words in Thai to evaluate timing control at the word level in brain-damaged patients. Subjects included young and old normal adults, right hemisphere patients, and left hemisphere nonfluent and fluent aphasic patients. Utterances were produced at a conversational speaking rate. Results indicated that, on an absolute or relative measurement scale, magnitude of the shortening effect on nonfinal syllables in polysyllabic words was significantly smaller in left nonfluent aphasics than in other groups. In trisyllabic words, duration of the penultimate syllable for left fluent aphasics was also significantly longer than that of normals. Left nonfluent and fluent aphastics were signficantly more variable than other speakers in their production of bisyllabic and trisyllabic words. Findings are discussed in relation to issues pertaining to the nature of timing deficits in nonfluent and fluent aphasic patients.

The Accentuation of the Hebrew Jussive and Preterite

Evidence from both internal reconstructions and external attestations shows that consonant-final jussives and preterites in Hebrew were originally accented on the penultimate syllable (ytiqtul). Tiberian Hebrew jussive/preterite (way)yiqt6l came about through an early process of forward stress-movement affecting consonant-final forms. Penultimate accentuation in most waw consecutives arose much later, by a process of reverse stress-movement, and not (as has recently been argued) by conservation of the original, paroxytone pattern. Conservation of the original pattern occurs only in jussives/preterites of the LL-heh class, which had, by a twist of phonological fate, been unable to participate in the early forward stress shift.

Fundamental frequency and perceived prominence of accented syllables

Perceived prominence differences between accented words have been accounted for in terms of fundamental frequency (F0) variations. In one theory prominence is related to the relative magnitude of F0 changes, and in another theory prominence is related to relative frequencies of F0 maxima. Two experiments with the same group of subjects contrasted the two theories. The experiments used reiterant speech consisting of "maMAmamamaMAma" utterances with synthesized F0 contours, with F0 maxima on the second and penultimate syllables (P1 and P2, respectively). In one experiment the utterances had no baseline declination, and in the other experiment the slope of the baseline was varied. In both experiments, subjects performed an adjustment task under two different instructions: They were instructed to adjust P2 so that it had the same pitch or prominence as P1. The results show that both variables (instruction and presence or absence of baseline declination) affect the adjustments of P2. It is concluded that neither theory gives a satisfactory account of the results, and that perceived prominence is related in a complex way to the range of F0 values employed.