Mastering lexical stress is a persistent challenge for second-language (L2) learners, particularly when first-language (L1) prosodic systems differ markedly from the target language. This study investigates how Arabic phonological patterns influence English stress assignment and evaluates the effectiveness of two explicit instructional approaches, ”contrastive phonological analysis” (CPA) and “auditory discrimination training” (ADT), for Arab English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. A total of 180 Jordanian 11th-grade learners completed perception and production tasks involving 50 disyllabic and polysyllabic English words representing five stress types. Acoustic features (pitch, duration, and intensity) were measured using Praat and judged for accuracy by native speakers. Results showed persistent L1 transfer, particularly default penultimate stress and reduced accuracy in morphologically complex forms. Both interventions led to significant improvement in perception and production, with CPA yielding greater gains on stress-ambiguous forms. A strong perception–production correlation ( r = .72, p < .001) confirmed a transfer effect and delayed post-tests showed moderate retention. Findings highlight the role of prosodic transfer and support contrastive, perception-based instruction to improve stress competence among Arab learners.

Background: Although tone acquisition is one of the most challenging aspects for adult second language (L2) learners, research remains limited on how learners from non-tonal first language (L1) backgrounds develop across proficiency levels. The current study examined Mandarin disyllabic tone sequences produced by learners at three proficiency levels. Methods: This study recorded the Mandarin tone production of beginner, intermediate, and advanced Korean learners and evaluated their accuracy and error patterns to determine whether similarities between L1 and L2 prosodic systems affect tone sequence difficulty. Results: Across groups, tone sequence rankings were consistent, differing mainly in accuracy rates. Learners showed an advantage in producing sequences aligned with Korean tonal patterns, such as T1–T1 and T3–T1, which were the easiest to produce. In contrast, sequences without Korean counterparts, particularly those ending in T2, remained the most difficult at all proficiency levels. Conclusions: Neurolinguistic evidence suggests that tones lacking L1 motor representations are disadvantaged by limited motor templates and weaker auditory coding, which together account for persistent difficulty with T2 sequences. Interestingly, T2 in word-initial position improved with experience, as increased exposure and practice helped learners form new sensorimotor routines supported by strengthened auditory–motor coupling. Over time, such experience-dependent neural reorganization enables more precise execution of rising F0 movements when tones occur at the beginning of a sequence, whereas carry-over interference from preceding tones continues to hinder accuracy in word-final position. This study provides insight into how sensorimotor and auditory systems interact in L2 tone learning, offering a neurocognitive framework for understanding prosodic transfer.

A Comparative Literary Study of the Prosodic Systems of English and Arabic Poetry

This study examined the acoustic profiles of five basic emotions in American English and Mandarin Chinese using a big data approach. A total of 6,373 features were extracted using the openSMILE toolkit, and key discriminative features were identified through random forest classification. In American English, vocal emotions were primarily conveyed through pitch-related features, while Mandarin Chinese, shaped by its tonal constraints, relied more on spectral and voice quality cues, including MFCCs, HNR, and shimmer. Linear mixed-effects models confirmed significant effects of emotion on the top-ranked features, and Cohen's d further supported distinct acoustic profiles for each emotion. K-means clustering revealed both categorical groupings and dimensional overlaps, such as the clustering of high-arousal emotions like happy and surprised, and low-arousal emotions like sad and neutral. These results suggest that vocal emotion expression is shaped by language-specific prosodic systems, as well as by both discrete emotion categories and continuous affective dimensions, supporting an integrated model of emotional prosody.

This study examines the influence of Spanish phonology on the acquisition of intonation and prosodic patterns in English by Spanish speakers. It highlights that structural differences in the prosodic systems of both languages significantly impact pronunciation, fluency, and the perception of naturalness in oral communication. In Spanish, a syllabic rhythm predominates, with a predictable placement of stress on certain syllables, contrasted with the accentual pattern of English, where variability in emphasis placement and modal intonations reflect pragmatic intentions and nuances. These differences cause native Spanish speakers to tend to apply Spanish-specific accent and intonation patterns, making comprehension difficult for English-speaking listeners and limiting expressive capacity in English discourse. The paper emphasizes the need to implement pedagogical strategies that promote the internalization of English prosodic patterns through specific training in tonal variations, stress placement, and contrasting intonational structures. This would facilitate more authentic and effective communication, helping Spanish speakers overcome phonological obstacles and improve their communicative competence in English.

Articulatory and Acoustic Features of Supra Segmental units in Foreign Language Teaching and Their Methodological Significance Summary This article explores the articulatory and acoustic features of supra segmental elements (stress, intonation, rhythm, and pauses) in the speech process. It compares the prosodic systems of English and Azerbaijani, highlighting methodological challenges in teaching these elements and suggesting effective solutions. Drawing on the research of both local and international scholars, the paper analyzes the communicative and emotional functions of stress, intonation, rhythm, and pauses. The findings indicate that visualizing supra segmental features (via Praat software) and applying methods such as shadowing and dramatization significantly enhance learners’ pronunciation skills. Keywords: supra segmental level, intonation, stress, rhythm, pause, articulatory features, acoustic features, phonetic teaching

Abstract What happens when an accentual language develops a tonal contrast from laryngeal features: is the accent system kept alongside the new tone contrast? Is it lost? Do both prosodic systems merge? In this paper, I present the tone system of Paicî, which illustrates the latter outcome. Paicî seems to possess two integrated prosodic subsystems: a purely tonal H vs. L contrast, and a typologically unusual downstep with accentual properties. Building on Rivierre (1978) , I show that a comparison with neighboring Xârâcùù, where accent is marked by a similar downstep, explains this apparently mixed system: the H/L tonal contrast emerged through tonogenesis in an already accentual language, where accent was marked by a downstep just like in Xârâcùù. This caused the former downstep to be reinterpreted as tonal. The Paicî case is interesting for the study of the interactions between accent and tone, both in synchrony and in diachrony.

Prosodic systems of Southern Russian dialects spoken in the regions of Kaluga, Ryazan’, and Lipetsk possess a specific rising tonal accent H*+^H* (level high + rising + level extra-high + falling tone) utilized in yes-no questions and non-final parts of utterances. In the oldest speakers’ speech this accent is accompanied by some kind of laryngeal activity, acoustic correlates of which are quite similar to those of Danish stød: it is a non-modal phonation type (glottal squeak) where the first part of the syllable is characterized acoustically by a high intensity level; in the second part there is a considerable decrease in intensity, a noticeable leap in fundamental frequency, and an evident aperiodicity of the speech signal; on the boundary between the two phases most speakers have a strong glottal constriction. Phonologically, the F0 perturbation of Danish stød is a side effect of laryngealization and the stød itself, bound to definite syllables in certain word types, and is seen as a single object attaching to a particular node in the metrical structure, not a composite tonal entity; while in Russian dialects it is a significant part of the H*+^H*pitch accent, used to distinguish it from the very similar L*+H* one found in narrow focus statements. Diachronically, Russian “stød” in the H*+^H* pitch accent may be seen as a consequence of the compression of an archaic L*+H H- L% melodic contour into one syllable; nowadays the original H*+^H* accent seems to be transforming into the much simpler H* found in Western Russian dialects.

Building on Jun’s prosodic typology (2005, 2014), this study examines how head and edge languages differ in their strategies for expressing focus. While head languages like English rely on pitch expansion in focus and post-focal compression, edge languages like Japanese are thought to emphasize boundary cues. Inspired by the framework proposed by Mizuguchi and Tateishi (2023), we hypothesized that in educated standard Japanese, focus marking extends beyond pitch modulation to include the boundary cues such as duration and silence insertions. To test this, we analyzed recordings of native speakers of educated standard Japanese producing noun phrases under broad and narrow focus conditions, examining duration, F0 maxima, intensity, and silence insertion at both the word and morpheme levels. The results demonstrate that while F0 maxima cue focus, duration and silence insertion play dominant roles in marking focus and focus position, especially at the word level. Intensity, in contrast, primarily cues accent, though it also signals focus position at the morpheme level in contexts with unaccented initial words, a particularly challenging environment for focus marking. These findings reveal a hybrid prosodic system in educated standard Japanese, where temporal and boundary cues dominate but pitch modulation remains an auxiliary tool. This system reflects the typological distinctions between head and edge languages, with educated standard Japanese relying on a flexible combination of global and local cues to signal focus. Future research should investigate how these cues are processed in perception and whether similar strategies are employed in other syntactic structures, offering broader insights into the prosodic systems of edge languages. Keywords: Narrow Focus vs. Broad Focus; Japanese; Pitch; Duration; Silence

A notoriously contested subarea of phonological typology is word-prosodic typology, which governs suprasegmental structure (such as tone, syllable structure and stress) at the word level. Within word-prosodic typology, it is widely recognized that some languages have so-called stress systems while others have lexical-tone systems. Other languages appear to have intermediate systems, with properties of both stress and lexically contrastive tone. Certain types of such intermediate systems are at the core of ongoing theoretical debates on the nature of word- prosodic systems, viz. language varieties with contrasts between two word tones that are restricted to the main-stressed syllables of a word, a phenomenon that is often descriptively referred to as tonal accent. In this paper, we aim to show that exploring tone-accent systems in detail has the potential to significantly contribute to word-prosodic typology, specifically concerning the foot as a tool for the analysis of syllable-internal prosodic contrasts. The phonology of tonal accent in Franconian (a variety of West Germanic spoken in parts of Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands) will be the main piece of evidence supporting our claims, with a focus on predictable interactions between segmental structure and accentuation. A central implication of our analysis is that tonal contrasts within syllables can sometimes derive from two types of feet being active in the same prosodic system. We support the Franconian evidence with analogous tone-segment interactions in Estonian and discuss the relevance of our claims in the broader context of word-prosodic typology.

This study explores the extent to which Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals, a population that is said to have a residual high tone of African origin, keep their two languages temporally and intonationally distinct across statements. While creole languages that emerged from the contact of African and European languages, such as Palenquero, may develop hybrid prosodic systems with tones from substrate languages, and stress from the majority language, language-specific prosody might be expected to converge or simplify over the course of time. As prosodic convergence seems to be inescapable under Palenquero’s circumstances, which factors could support language-specific prosody in this population, if there are any? Two-hundred and thirty-four five-syllable statements were elicited through a discourse completion task, with the participation of ten Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals, in two unilingual sessions. Both phrase-final lengthening and F0 contours were assessed using linear mixed-effects models testing their association with final stress, language, and generation. F0 contours were dimensionally reduced using functional principal component analysis. Despite the strong similarities between the two languages, results indicate that both groups keep their two languages intonationally distinct using plateau-shaped contours in Palenquero initial rises followed by steeper declinations in Spanish. However, elderly bilinguals implement penultimate lengthening language-specifically, being more pronounced in Palenquero. Adults, in contrast, do not show this distinction. In addition to this, elderly speakers show hyperarticulation in Spanish intonation, increasing the difference between their languages. This leads us to believe that adults exhibit a more simplified prosodic system between their languages, relative to elderly bilinguals. In spite of such differences, both generations seem to have the same underlying process (perhaps a substrate effect) driving plateau-shaped intonation in Palenquero, which enhances language differentiation.

Abstract This study examines crosslinguistic vocal register variations (pitch level and range) within speakers of L1 French-L2 English and L1 English-L2 French. Participants were recorded on three tasks: reading aloud, video retelling, and free speech, in both French and English. A separate analysis of the f 0 of voiced pauses in relation to vocal register is presented. The main hypothesis is that French is spoken on a higher vocal register than English, the difference being due to the divergent prosodic systems of the two languages, as opposed to an effect of the language status for the speaker (L1 or L2). The results partially confirm it, although the L1 and the task type influence the language effect. In addition, results indicate that pitch level and pitch range can vary independently; that the task has a significant effect on vocal register; and that the f 0 of voiced pauses is lower than the average speaking f 0, thus impacting its measure and raising methodological issues for the study of vocal register.

We consider two asymmetries reported in the literature on word prosodic systems: the tendency to allow more prosodic contrast in nouns than in verbs and the tendency to avoid stress on functional material. We focus on the interaction between these two tendencies and propose a formal mechanism to handle this interaction couched in Optimality Theory. In a case study on a group of standard Serbo-Croatian varieties that have predictable stress in verbs but contrastive stress in nouns, we develop an analysis of predictable and morphologically conditioned stress assignment. Our analysis features a family of constraints militating against stress on non-lexical material on three different levels: stress on inflection proper (*Infl-Stress-1), stress on non-lexical material in the locality domain of inflection (*Infl-Stress-2), and stress on non-lexical material altogether (*Infl-Stress-3). Analyzing a class of prosodically exceptional denominal and borrowed verbs, we show that lexical-category effects exist between and within categories: denominal verbs allow exceptional preservation of nominal stress, which leads to additional prosodic contrast in this class of verbs. Finally, we explore the option of subsuming exceptionally contrast-preserving borrowed verbs under denominal verbs, offering arguments in favor of the hotly debated view from the literature that verbs are universally borrowed as denominal.

This study investigated Intrinsic Vowel Pitch (If0) in the Belgian Limburg dialect of Hamont. Its main aim was to investigate a potential correlation between If0 and f0, which has been attested in previous research, especially on contour tone languages. The Hamont dialect is particularly interesting because it has a pitch accent distinction, but also because the vowel system has a high and low vowel contrast in the front and the back dimension of the vowel space. The results of this study are generally compatible with If0 research on many languages but adds some new insights. Firstly, it was found that If0 in the Hamont dialect is comparatively large (1.97 semitones). Secondly, it was confirmed that the front–back distinction in vowel articulation has no significant effect on If0. Thirdly, when If0 is expressed on a semitone scale, no significant differences in If0 were found between male and female speakers of the dialect. The most important finding of the paper is the significant positive correlation between f0 and If0 in that If0 is smaller in the lower pitch range and bigger in the higher pitch range. This phenomenon in Hamont Dutch is much the same to what is observed in contour tone languages that have been examined for this. There are indications that a similar tendency exists in register tone languages and intonation languages. Although the cause of this progressive If0 reduction is not entirely clear, its wide distribution across prosodic systems seems to point towards a universal tendency.

Prosodic features are some of the most salient features of dialect variation in Norway. It is therefore no wonder that the switch in prosodic systems is what is first recognized by caretakers and scholars when Norwegian children code-switch to something resembling the dialect of the capital (henceforth Urban East Norwegian, UEN) in role-play. With a focus on the system of lexical tonal accents, this paper investigates the spontaneous speech of North Norwegian children engaging in peer social role-play. By investigating F0 contours extracted from a corpus of spontaneous peer play, and comparing them with elicited baseline reference contours, this paper makes the case that children fail to apply the target tonal accent consistent with UEN in compounds in role-play, although the production of tonal accents otherwise seems to be phonetically target like UEN. Put in other words, they perform in accordance with UEN phonetics, but not UEN morpho-phonology.

Until now, the classification of the prosodic systems of some languages (including Berber languages) is not conclusive and open to alternative interpretations. The question is: are these languages better classified as lacking stress or more controlled and systematic studies of these languages are needed? This study asks three main questions: (1) Is there lexical stress in Kabyle?, (2) what are the acoustic properties that manifest stress (if it turned out “it exists”)? and (3) which syllable in the word is prominent? Results from a closely controlled acoustic production study of 6 male Kabyle-native speakers, showed some evidence of lexical prominence in root words, which was manifested by intensity, duration (for vowel /æ/), and vowel quality (higher and more peripheral prominent syllable for /æ/ vowels). Louder, and higher and more peripheral vowels were observed in initial syllables while longer vowels (/æ/) were found in penultimate syllables. Surprisingly, based on the present data we did not see strong evidence of F0 being a meaningful correlate; however, we observed acoustic patterns consistent with an enhancement of the initial syllable corresponding to the focus condition, which led us to suggest that the pitch results looked like an intonational pitch accent that is location-sensitive. Implications and further work are discussed in the paper.

Many perception and processing effects of the lexical status of tone have been found in behavioral, psycholinguistic, and neuroscientific research, often pitting varieties of tonal Chinese against non-tonal Germanic languages. While the linguistic and cognitive evidence for lexical tone is therefore beyond dispute, the word prosodic systems of many languages continue to escape the categorizations of typologists. One controversy concerns the existence of a typological class of “pitch accent languages,” another the underlying phonological nature of surface tone contrasts, which in some cases have been claimed to be metrical rather than tonal. We address the question whether the Sequence Recall Task (SRT), which has been shown to discriminate between languages with and without word stress, can distinguish languages with and without lexical tone. Using participants from non-tonal Indonesian, semi-tonal Swedish, and two varieties of tonal Mandarin, we ran SRTs with monosyllabic tonal contrasts to test the hypothesis that high performance in a tonal SRT indicates the lexical status of tone. An additional question concerned the extent to which accuracy scores depended on phonological and phonetic properties of a language’s tone system, like its complexity, the existence of an experimental contrast in a language’s phonology, and the phonetic salience of a contrast. The results suggest that a tonal SRT is not likely to discriminate between tonal and non-tonal languages within a typologically varied group, because of the effects of specific properties of their tone systems. Future research should therefore address the first hypothesis with participants from otherwise similar tonal and non-tonal varieties of the same language, where results from a tonal SRT may make a useful contribution to the typological debate on word prosody.

Reviewed by: Postclassical Greek: Contemporary Approaches to Philology and Linguistics ed. by Dariya Rafiyenko and Ilja A. Seržant William A. Ross dariya rafiyenko and ilja a. seržant (eds.), Postclassical Greek: Contemporary Approaches to Philology and Linguistics (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 335; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020). Pp. viii + 339. $114.99. This volume brings together a slate of scholars to examine linguistic aspects of postclassical Greek, including the biblical corpus, in an interdisciplinary context. It begins with an essay by the editors Dariya Rafiyenko and Ilja A. Seržant that offers an overview of postclassical Greek itself, which they define as "the entire set of spoken and written varieties of the period from 323 BC up to 1453 AD" (p. 1). Their essay briefly surveys issues of periodization and grammar, with an emphasis on the importance of variation in linguistic description, for which reason Rafiyenko and Seržant join others—rightly so in my opinion—in questioning the separation of linguistics from philology that has prevailed throughout much of the last century. They advocate instead what they call the "rephilologization of historical linguistics" (p. 12). The volume is divided into two sections. The first is "Grammatical Categories," which begins with "Purpose and Result Clauses: ἵνα-hína and ὥστε-hṓste in the Greek Documentary Papyri of the Roman Period," by Giuseppina di Bartolo, who surveys the disappearance of certain semantic distinctions in different moods and a reduction of conjunctions to introduce purpose and result clauses. In "Syntactic Factors in the Greek Genitive-Dative Syncretism: The Contribution of New Testament Greek," Chiara Gianollo considers postnominal genitives in the NT, which allowed for the propagation of an external possession construction. Then, in "Future Periphrases in John Malalas," Daniel Kölligan looks at the earliest Byzantine world chronicler, in whose work certain novel, but not idiosyncratic, expressions of future reference appear alongside older patterns. The next essay is "Combining Linguistics, Paleography and Papyrology: The Use of eis, pros and epí in Greek Papyri," by Joanne Stolk, who contrasts these prepositions with the bare dative in expressions of animate goal of motion and transfer verbs, providing new interpretations for uses otherwise considered exceptional. In "Future Forms in Postclassical Greek: Some Remarks on the Septuagint and the New Testament," Liana Tronci examines diachronic morphology to mark future tense, taking external factors such as register variation within the biblical corpus into account. The next essay, by Brian D. Joseph, is entitled "Greek Infinitive-Retreat versus Grammaticalization: An Assessment"; he argues that the morphosyntactic changes in infinitive use represent degrammaticalization and thus that grammatical change is not always unidirectional. The last essay in the first section of this volume is "Postclassical Greek and Treebanks for a Diachronic Analysis," by Nikolaos Lavidas and Dag Trygve Truslew Haug. They employ diachronic analysis to examine syntactic phenomena such as backward control and thus build a linguistic profile of earlier texts. The second section in this volume includes topics related to sociolinguistic aspects and variation in postclassical Greek. The first essay, by Marina Benedetti, is "The Perfect [End Page 538] Paradigm in Theodosius' Κανόνες: Diathetically Indifferent and Diathetically Non-Indifferent Forms," in which she examines the discussion of the perfect in a fourth-century c.e. grammatical treatise. Next, in "Forms of the Directive Speech Act: Evidence from Early Ptolemaic Papyri," Carla Bruno considers strategies available for inducing others to action, including performative utterances and indirect implicatures, among other possibilities. The next essay is one of the longest in the book: "What's in a (personal) Name? Morphology and Identity in Jewish Greek Literature in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods," by Robert Crellin. He challenges the notion that non-nativized morphology of Hebrew personal names implies low-level Greek, arguing instead that sociolinguistic and literary considerations are at work in the decision to adapt personal names or not. The next essay is "Confusion of Mood or Phoneme? The Impact of L1 Phonology on Verb Semantics," by Sonja Dahlgren and Martti Leiwo, who question whether the extensive nonstandard vowel use in Egyptian Greek texts is evidence of poor command of Greek. They suggest instead that such spellings represent underdifferentiated Greek phonemes and transfer elements from non-Greek prosodic systems. The last...

This study presents preliminary results of an automated prosodic clustering analysis of Bardi, a Nyulnyulan language from Northern Australia, using methods from Kaland (2021). Previous work on Bardi prosody identified several functions of boundary tones and two main phrase types, but stressed that findings were preliminary. Here we extend that work and show evidence for several additional phrase types, as well as confirming the overall accuracy of automated clustering. This work adds to the prosodic typology of Australian languages (cf. Fletcher et al. 2002) and provides further evidence for the functions of intonation beyond demarcation in these languages. When coupled with evaluation by a knowledgeable researcher, this automated approach can greatly expedite prosodic analysis on a large scale and expand our typology of prosodic systems.

Lexical stress plays a critical role in multisyllabic word reading in English. However, assignment of English lexical stress, which is neither fixed nor marked in writing, can pose significant challenges for English learners and has not been well-understood. The present study aims to fill the research gap by studying sensitivity to lexical stress cues and its contribution to their word reading performance among young English-language learners whose first language is Korean. The fundamental differences in prosodic systems between Korean and English provide theoretical significance of studying how bilingual children having no lexical stress in their first language process English lexical stress. This study focuses on two major cues to English lexical stress: morphological and orthographic cues. Findings revealed that the participants are sensitive to the two stress cues, with better performance with orthographic cues to stress assignment. However, no statistically significant correlations were found among variables on stress cue sensitivity with those on reading.