Prosodic Word Research Articles

The secret morphology of Tashlhiyt Berber

Abstract Two secret languages used in Tashlhiyt Berber are reported in work by Douchaïna (1996, 1998) and Lahrouchi & Ségéral (2009, 2010ab): Tagnawt and Taqjmit. I propose that they should both be analyzed as instances of prosodic morphology, employing the same prosodic morpheme [L.LL.L]. Prosodic morphemes are common in the regular morphology of Tashlhiyt: the prosodic foot [LL] for the imperfective and Tifrdi, the prosodic word [H.H] for Ukris, and [L.H.L] for Tirrugza, Abnakli and Azddayru (Jebbour 1999, Dell & Elmedlaoui 1992). The prosodic shape [L.LL.L] of the secret languages fills out the paradigm as a variant of [L.H.L], which appears marginally in the secret languages. The shapes [L.LL.L] and [L.H.L] are found also in Tashlhiyt verse metrics, where they form a natural class of verse feet, alternating with the anapest [LL.H] (Dell & Elmedlaoui 2008, Riad 2017). Based in part on the striking shape parallels in Tashlhiyt, I argue that there is an organic connection between prosodic morphemes and the prosodic categories employed in verse. Furthermore, the simultaneous prosodic structures that we find in verse metrics—regular prosody and meter—are applicable also to prosodic morphology, particularly clearly so in root-and-pattern formations.

Accent Strength in Lithuanian: Evidence from the Saussurean Accent Shift

This paper investigates the distribution of surface accents in Lithuanian nominals based on data from Standard Lithuanian. Inflected nouns and adjectives in this language are subject to the following major accent rules: (a) the Basic Accentuation Principle (Halle & Vergnaud 1987a; b); (b) the Saussurean Accent Shift (Blevins 1993, Ambrazas 2006). I argue that one can account for both in a system where underlying lexical accents can vary in strength. This approach provides advantages compared to the analysis presented in Blevins (1993). For instance, in order to determine the placement of the accent within a weak stem, one does not have to resort to extraprosodicity or floating tones, thanks to a weak accent being present in the UR. The Saussurean Accent Shift, for which Blevins’s paper accounts only partially (see Section 5), is analyzed as an edge effect whereby a clash of two underlying accents at the right edge of a prosodic word results in the surface accent being right-aligned.

A prosodic constraint on wh-extraction from preverbal infinitival subjects

This paper introduces a series of mitigating circumstances improving the acceptability of wh-extraction from preverbal infinitival subjects in Rioplatense Spanish. It is argued that the factor behind these amelioration effects is encoded in prosodic structure, much in line with the hypothesis that certain island restrictions apply at PF. The linguistic principle accounting for the phenomenon is proposed to be a faithfulness constraint at the syntax-prosody interface stating that an extraction domain XP cannot be mapped as a prosodic word ω at PF. An alternative syntactic account based on freezing is shown to be unable to capture the relevant contrasts.

L1 Influences on Bulgarian-Accented German: Prosodic Units and Prenuclear Pitch Accents

This study investigates the L1 influence on the use of accentual patterns, choice of prenuclear pitch accent types and their realization on L2 prosody. We use Mennen’s LILt model as a framework for our analysis. We recorded ten Bulgarian female speakers of German and ten female native German speakers who read Aesop’s fable The North Wind and the Sun. We found that the tendency for the Bulgarian native speakers to use more pitch accents than German native speakers is transferred to the L2 German of the Bulgarian learners. L*+H was the most frequent prenuclear pitch accent used by all groups. We also found that the Bulgarian learners stressed more function words and tolerated more stress clashes than the native German speakers. When speaking German, under the influence of the statistical regularities that relate to prosodic word patterns in their mother tongue, Bulgarian learners phrased their L2 speech into a higher number of shorter prosodic words, and therefore realized more pitch accents and aligned the high tonal target earlier than the native speakers. Concerning the variable alignment of the high target, we propose the prosodic word or the two-syllable window as the tentative candidate for an anchorage region. Our findings can be explained with respect to age of learning, as proposed by LILt’s general theoretical assumptions.

Atypical phonological processes in naming errors of children with language impairment

ABSTRACT The current study explored the characteristics of phonological errors of preschool children with DLD (Developmental Language Disorder), distinguishing between typical versus atypical phonological processes in segmental, syllabic and word levels. The analysis included 87 responses of words with phonological errors from a naming test, produced by 13 preschool children with DLD, aged 4;4–6;3 years. These responses included 166 phonological processes, which were classified into typical and atypical processes at the levels of: segments, syllables, and prosodic words. The findings revealed that 70% of the phonological processes were atypical. Furthermore, ten children produced more atypical processes, and there were more atypical than typical processes in segmental and word levels. It is suggested that some children with DLD represent phonological processes that are similar to those that children with speech and sound disorders produce. Therefore, clinically, the results emphasise the importance of analysing the typical and atypical characteristics of phonological errors as part of language assessment.

Competing prosodic influences on VOT length in Hawaiian

Previous research on voice onset time shows that VOT in unaspirated stops is at best only weakly affected by prosodic strengthening (Hodgson, 2021; Simonet et al., 2014). VOT duration is analyzed in Hawaiian, which has only /p k/, in conjunction with a prosodic analysis, to determine its stop type, and investigate whether prosodic boundaries condition VOT length. Data comprise speech from seven speakers interviewed on the radio program Ka Leo Hawai‘i in the 1970–80s (Kettig, 2021). Using the computational prosodic grammar in Parker Jones (2010), stops were coded for whether they occurred in lexical word-initial/medial position, in a stressed/unstressed syllable, and in prosodic word-initial/medial position. The results indicate that the average duration of /p/ is 24ms and /k/ is 41ms, the latter being on the higher end of unaspirated stop ranges (Cho and Ladefoged, 1999). VOT is significantly longer before stressed word-medial syllables, but shorter before stressed word-initial syllables. For word-medial stressed syllables, VOT is also significantly longer when the syllable is in prosodic-word initial position. VOT length may have separate functions in Hawaiian unaspirated stops: strengthen a lexical word boundary especially before an unstressed syllable via shortening, but lengthen word-medially to demarcate a prosodic word boundary.

Defining the prosodic word with segmental processes in Dagbani

Abstract Few studies have explored the relevance of metrical structures in segmental processes. This paper shows that Dagbani (Gur, Ghana), has a prosodic word dominating a trochaic foot which licenses segmental processes and phonotactics. The foot is the domain for marked vowels and unmarked consonants. The prosodic word regulates the sequencing of syllables of different degrees of sonority and weight within a word. The Optimality Theoretic analyses make use of classical metrical theory and prosodic principles used in defining the prosodic word in stress languages to highlight the typological relevance of these principles and the prosodic universality of these metrical structures.

Recursive Prosodic Structure in Nez Perce Double Reduplication

Full and double reduplication are found in Nez Perce (nimipuutímt), a Sahaptian language spoken in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Full reduplication is characteristic of many nouns and adjectives, while double reduplication occurs when fully-reduplicated forms are subject to an additional reduplicative process, a Ci- prefix indicating plural. This paper describes the quantity-sensitive primary stress pattern of fully- and doubly-reduplicated adjectives, demonstrating a systematic departure from the usual pattern of quantity-insensitive penultimate stress in Nez Perce. It then use patterns of vowel length and plural exponence to show that fully-reduplicated adjectives exhibit a bimoraic stem minimum (though fully-reduplicated nouns do not), and argues that these facts can be understood as a manifestation of a complex recursive prosodic word structure where each stem is its own prosodic word and the Ci- prefix is adjoined as an affixal clitic.

Phonetically Identical Forms can Have Different Phonological Behaviors

There is a lot of research since at least mid-1980s documenting the effect of incomplete neutralization of phonological contrasts. Some researchers have taken this as evidence against traditional formal phonology where categorical phonological representation is assumed. By such way of using phonetic measurement to directly infer phonological representation, two assumptions have been made. First, phonetically different forms should be different in phonology; Second, phonetically identical forms should be identical in phonology. The first assumption has been largely undermined in the case of prosodic words lengthening in Japanese. It has been showed that although lengthened prosodic word has identical phonological behavior with their underlying counterpart in Japanese, their durations are significantly different. As an attempt to oppose the second assumption, the current study investigates Tone 4 Sandhi of Huai’an Mandarin. I show that although Lexically Derived Tone 3 is phonetically indistinguishable from Post-Lexically Derived Tone 3 with regard to F0, their phonological behaviors are different with regard to the ability to trigger another tone sandhi process. F0 is measured since it contains all critical phonetic cues that can distinguish Mandarin tones.

Situating Blackfoot within a typology of (mobile) boundary tone grammars

We propose that boundary tones are best understood as derived from the interaction of constraints that introduce tones at certain levels of the prosodic hierarchy and constraints that govern the alignment of those tones to segmental material. On this decomposition of the classic notion of a boundary tone, we expect to find languages in which a tone introduced by a prosodic constituent surfaces away from the edge of that constituent. We refer to these as 'mobile' boundary tones. Informed by a quantitative analysis of pitch contours, we argue that Blackfoot is a mobile boundary tone language. We provide a grammar to account for the Blackfoot pattern, where a L tone introduced by the prosodic word surfaces before a H tone docked to the stress syllable, and we situate Blackfoot within a mini-typology predicted by re-ranking of the proposed constraints.

Gendering prosody in communication

Abstract The study focuses on the prosody of Standard Chinese in communication in correlation with gender of speakers. In the field of Standard Chinese prosody is built on the research work done by Oldřich Švarný, who established the system of prosodic transcription and analysis. The connection with the gender of the speakers is completely new and unique. This article uses results of the analysis of SC language corpus transcribed by prosodic transcription and endeavour to find a connection between obtained results and gendered influences on prosodic (suprasegmental) level of language. Basic prosodic phenomena observed here are prosodic word syllable number, speech rate, syllable accentual prominence and the frequency of rhythmic sequence types. The results clearly show there is a connection between gender of the speaker and the prosodic realization of his/her speech.

Phonetic Realizations of Metrical Structure in Tone Languages: Evidence From Chinese Dialects.

In tone languages, some case studies showed that the word-level tonal representation was closely related to the underlying metrical pattern. Based on different tonal patterns in prosodic units, the metrical structures could generally be divided into the left- and right-dominant types in Chinese dialects. Yet the cross-dialectal phonetic realizations (e.g., duration and pitch) between or within these two metrical structures were still unrevealed. The current study investigated the duration and pitch realizations of disyllabic prosodic words in Changsha and Chengdu dialects (the left-dominant structure), and in Fuzhou and Xiamen dialects (the right-dominant structure). Results showed that not all the duration patterns across four Chinese dialects were sensitive to different metrical structures, indicating that the duration might not be the universal cue for metrical prominence in Chinese dialects. In terms of pitch realization across all the four Chinese dialects, level tones (sometimes falling tones) generally appeared in the metrically weak unit, while underlying pitch forms appeared in the metrically strong unit. Compared with duration, pitch might be more robust for prosodic realizations of metrical structures in Chinese dialects. Furthermore, there was an interaction between duration and pitch patterns in Chinese dialects, which could shed new light on the phenomenon of “metrical tone sandhi”. Meanwhile, this study also provides some references for the judgment of the metrical stress and prosodic realizations in other Chinese dialects.

Prosodic Word Recursion in a Polysynthetic Language (Blackfoot; Algonquian)

This paper focuses on prosodic adjunction at the Prosodic Word level in a polysynthetic language. I argue that recursion at a depth of more than two levels can only be generated by a theory which requires exact correspondence between certain syntactic phrases and Prosodic Words. Such a theory is similar to Phonological Phrase correspondence in Match Theory, suggesting there is an underlying shared property between correspondence at the Prosodic Word and Phonological Phrase levels. In addition, this theory must include a constraint which prohibits recursive prosodic constituents in order to generate the attested typology of clitics across languages. The empirical focus is the prosodic structure of the verbal complex in Blackfoot (Algonquian; ISO 639-3: bla). Using phonotactic evidence I argue that the vP phase corresponds to a Prosodic Word, and that each prefix to the stem is a Prosodic Word adjunct. I then compare several theories of the syntax-prosody interface, including versions of Alignment Theory, Wrap Theory, and Match Theory. A subset of schematic candidates with one or two prefixes to a stem are used to determine which theories generate the attested typology of clitics as well as a multiply recursive Prosodic Word structure.

Word stress at utterance-final position

Abstract This study investigates the realization of the two most common word-level stress patterns in Hebrew, final and penultimate, at utterance-final position. Twenty-six disyllabic words that form minimal pairs, which differ only in their stress pattern, were embedded in 52 sentences. The mean values of three acoustic parameters—duration, F0, and intensity—were measured for vowels of the target words. Findings show that duration is significantly longer at stressed vowels, similar to previous findings on words at utterance-mid position. Lower intensity is assigned to the utterance-final vowels regardless of the stress pattern, but the degree of lowering does depend on the stress pattern. Finally, lower F0 values are found in the utterance-final vowels, but the degree of lowering is similar to both stress patterns. We conclude that duration is the main cue at the prosodic word level, while F0 is used by Hebrew speakers to cue higher prosodic units.

경상 방언 의문문 작용역의 지각 구분*

A wh-phrase positioned in an embedded clause can be interpreted as having a matrix scope if the sentence is produced with proper prosodic structures such as the wh-intonation. In a previous experiment, a sentence with a wh-phrase in an embedded clause was given to 40 speakers of Gyeongsang Korean. A script containing the sentence was provided to induce a matrix scope interpretation for the wh-phrase. These 40 utterances were prepared as stimuli for a perception test to verify whether the wh-phrases in the stimuli were perceived as having matrix scopes. Each utterance was played thrice to 24 subjects. The results showed that more than half of the 72 responses indicated a preference for an embedded scope rather than a matrix scope in 20 of the utterances. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that the matrix scope responses were best predicted by the magnitude of the pitch prominence in a prosodic word consisting of an embedded verb and a complementizer. The pitch prominence was calculated by subtracting the fundamental frequency (F0) at the right edge of the prosodic word from the peak F0 in the same prosodic word. The smaller the magnitude, the more matrix responses there were. These results suggest that the categorical perception of wh-scopes is based on the magnitude of pitch prominence.

Improving Fluency of Spoken Mandarin for Nonnative Speakers by Prosodic Boundary Prediction Based on Deep Learning

Nonnative Mandarin speakers always have some unnatural pauses when speaking Mandarin due to their native pronunciation habits. Accurately predicting the prosodic structure of Chinese sentences is the key to improving fluency in Mandarin for nonnative speakers. This paper investigated the influence of the Chinese prosodic boundaries on the Mandarin spoken by international students. First, we proposed a new method to predict the prosodic word and prosodic phrase boundaries from Chinese sentences to obtain the prosodic boundaries automatically. Then, we used the predicted results to improve the Mandarin spoken fluency of international students. To train the prosodic boundary prediction model, we firstly constructed a Chinese prosodic boundary corpus that includes 100,000 Chinese sentences with manually labeled prosodic boundaries under the guidance of a linguist. We also proposed an end-to-end Chinese prosodic boundary prediction model based on the sequence-to-sequence model with a new feature named number of syntax hierarchy (NSH). Finally, we assess the fluency score of Mandarin using 1300 utterances recorded by six international students and a native Mandarin speaker. The utterances are recorded without/with the predicted prosodic boundaries. The experimental results show that the F 1 scores of the prosodic word prediction model and the prosodic phrase prediction model are 98.14% and 85.24%, respectively. The fluency assessment results show that the fluency score labeled with the prosodic boundaries is higher than the fluency score of the international students when they read freely. The improvement of the score is between 7 and 16. Therefore, our method can be applied to the Mandarin education system to improve the spoken Mandarin fluency of nonnative speakers.

Planning of prosodic clitics in Australian English

ABSTRACT The prosodic word (PW) has been proposed as a planning unit in speech production (Levelt et al. [1999. A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 1–75]), supported by evidence that speech initiation time (RT) is faster for Dutch utterances with fewer PWs due to cliticisation (with the number of lexical words and syllables kept constant) (Wheeldon & Lahiri [1997. Prosodic units in speech production. Journal of Memory and Language, 37(3), 356–381. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1997.2517], W&L). The present study examined prosodic cliticisation (and resulting RT) for a different set of potential clitics (articles, direct-object pronouns), in English, using a different response task (immediate reading aloud). W&L’s result of shorter RTs for fewer PWs was replicated for articles, but not for pronouns, suggesting a difference in cliticisation for these two function word types. However, a post-hoc analysis of the duration of the verb preceding the clitic suggests that both are cliticised. These findings highlight the importance of supplementing production latency measures with phonetic duration measures to understand different stages of language production during utterance planning.

How relative frequency and prosodic structure affect the acoustic duration of English derivatives

Morphological segmentability, i.e., the degree to which complex words can be decomposed into their morphological constituents, has been considered an important factor in research on morphological processing and is expected to affect acoustic duration (e.g., Hay, 2001, 2003). One way of operationalizing segmentability is through the relative frequency of a complex word to its base word. However, relative frequency has failed to affect duration for different affix categories in many previous studies. One potential reason is the fact that complex words vary in their prosodic structure, depending on the prosodic integration of the affix (Plag & Ben Hedia, 2018).In a large corpus study with three different corpora and eight affixes each, we investigate how prosodic word structure and relative frequency influence duration, and how these two factors interact. We find that prosodic structure does not significantly interact with relative frequency. Second, we show that relative frequency effects on duration do not emerge consistently across a large number of affixes. Third, not only does prosodic word structure not explain the absence of relative frequency effects, it also often cannot account for durational differences as such. We discuss these findings in light of phonological theory and speech production models.

Pupillary entrainment reveals individual differences in cue weighting in 9-month-old German-learning infants

Young infants can segment continuous speech with statistical as well as prosodic cues. Understanding how these cues interact can be informative about how infants solve the segmentation problem. Here we investigate how German-speaking adults and 9-month-old German-learning infants weigh statistical and prosodic cues when segmenting continuous speech. We measured participants' pupil size while they were familiarized with a continuous speech stream where prosodic cues were pitted off against transitional probabilities. Adult participants' changes in pupil size synchronized with the occurrence of prosodic words during the familiarization and the temporal alignment of these pupillary changes was predictive of adult participants' performance at test. Further, 9-month-olds as a group failed to consistently segment the familiarization stream with prosodic or statistical cues. However, the variability in temporal alignment of the pupillary changes at word frequency showed that prosodic and statistical cues compete for dominance when segmenting continuous speech. A follow-up language development questionnaire at 40 months of age suggested that infants who entrained to prosodic words performed better on a vocabulary task and those infants who relied more on statistical cues performed better on grammatical tasks. Together these results suggest that statistics and prosody may serve different roles in speech segmentation in infancy.

Parallelism within serialism: primary stress is different

AbstractPrimary word stress is typologically diverse. In some languages, the metrical structure of a word predicts the location of primary stress, while in other languages it does not. This diversity is considered through the lens of Harmonic Serialism (HS), a serial constraint-based theory, and it is argued that HS must incorporate a limited degree of parallelism to capture the typology. Namely, primary-stress assignment is simultaneous with foot-building and also mobile, being (re)assessed throughout a metrical derivation. But incorporating this parallelism into HS is both possible and desirable: the positive typological consequences of HS are preserved, and the implied formal divergence between the prosodic word and the foot with respect to parallelism echoes a fundamental distinction that is visible in a wide range of extant theoretical and empirical findings.