Word stress assignment in German, English and Dutch: Quantity-sensitivity and extrametricality revisited

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Domahs ◽  
Ingo Plag ◽  
Rebecca Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Quantity Sensitivity

Syllable weight in monolingual and heritage Spanish

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-427
Author(s):  
Michael Shelton ◽  
Hannah Grant
Keyword(s):  
Reading Proficiency ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
General Effect ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Syllable Weight ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Quantity Sensitivity ◽  
Analysis Of Error

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

Word Stress in Languages of the Caucasus

2021 ◽  
pp. 728-755
Author(s):  
Lena Borise
Keyword(s):  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
North West ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
North East ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Whole Word ◽  
Complex Cases

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the stress systems in Abkhaz-Adyghean/North-West Caucasian, Nakh-Dagestanian/North-East Caucasian, and Kartvelian/South-Caucasian languages, as well as the larger Indo-European languages of the area, Ossetic (Iron and Digoron) and Armenian. First, it addresses the so-called free stress languages, in which stress placement is not restricted to particular syllables/syllable types or morphemes, and the fixed stress languages, in which stress always targets a syllable in a certain position, counting from the left or right edge of a word. Next, quantity-sensitive stress systems are considered, in which stress is found on the heavier syllable within a given domain, such as a whole word or a part of it (a so-called stress window). Further, the chapter discusses languages in which stress assignment is morphologically conditioned. After the chapter introduces this classification of stress systems, it addresses the more complex cases that do not (fully) fit into it, notably the stress systems of Abkhaz-Adyghean and some of the Nakh-Dagestanian languages. Finally, the chapter considers underdescribed stress systems and languages for which conflicting descriptions have been proposed. The chapter closes with an overview of the available instrumental studies. Overall, the aim of the current chapter is to highlight the impressive diversity that the languages of the Caucasus exhibit in the realm of word stress and emphasize the need for further research in the area, both instrumental and theoretical.

The North Atlantic and the Arctic

2020 ◽  
pp. 302-315
Author(s):  
Kristján Árnason ◽  
Anja Arnhold ◽  
Ailbhe Ní Chasaide ◽  
Nicole Dehé ◽  
Amelie Dorn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
The North ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Primary Word ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Quantity Sensitivity ◽  
Stress Patterns ◽  
Pitch Movement

Goidelic word stress is initial but with some signs of quantity sensitivity. Phrasal intonation tends to be falling (for both declaratives and questions) in southern Irish dialects but rising in northern ones. Interrogativity is marked by phonetic adjustments in initial or final accents of the utterance. Icelandic and Faroese have traditional word-initial stress-to-weight but show signs of penultimate stress patterns in loanwords. Intonation is characterized by phrasal accents within overall downtrend patterns (also in questions, but with some accentual distinctions). The polysynthetic structure of the Inuit languages makes the notion of lexical stress irrelevant, but tonal targets are associated with prosodic domains of various kinds, and a distinction is made between word-level and phrase-level tones; devoicing and truncation are utterance final. In Central Alaskan Yupik, primary word stress marks the last foot by pitch movement. Enclitic bound phrases, phrasal compounds, and non-enclitic bound phrases are seen as larger constituents below the utterance.

The (non)realization of unstressed elements in children's utterances: evidence for a rhythmic constraint

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Wijnen ◽  
Evelien Krikhaar ◽  
Els Den Os
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Anecdotal Evidence ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Quantity Sensitivity ◽  
Dutch Children

ABSTRACTIn this study it is argued that the omission of closed class morphemes and of unstressed syllables within words is related to their common characteristic, viz. that they are unstressed, rhythmically weak parts of utterances. Several strands of evidence indicate that it is unlikely that children are unable to perceive these elements in the input speech. The pattern of (non)realization of unstressed syllables within content words and the class of determiners, was analysed in two Dutch children from 1;6 to 2;11. It appeared that polysyllabic words were quite generally truncated in such a way that they fitted a trochaic (strong-weak) pattern, particularly in the early samples. Some observations with respect to the (non)realization of determiners are suggestive of an influence of an SW-constraint on the realization of noun phrases. These findings support the hypothesis that in the course of utterance preparation, words and phrases are mapped onto S(W) templates. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the dissolution of the SW-constraint coincides with the acquisition of specific aspects of stress assignment in Dutch, such as quantity sensitivity.

Arabic stress in strict CV, with no moras, no syllables, no feet and no extrametricality

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-600
Author(s):  
Noam Faust ◽  
Shanti Ulfsbjorninn
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Parameter Setting ◽  
Syllable Type ◽  
Stress Theory ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Quantity Sensitivity ◽  
Palestinian Arabic ◽  
First Time

Abstract This paper continues the effort that began in (Scheer, Tobias & Peter Szigetvari. 2005. Unified representations for stress and the syllable. Phonology 22(1). 37–75.) to present a compelling alternative to moraic accounts of stress systems, framed in the theory of Strict CV (Lowenstamm, Jean. 1996. CV as the only syllable type. In Jacques Durand & Bernard Laks (eds.), Current trends in phonology models and methods, 419–442. European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford.). We have chosen stress in Palestinian Arabic, a stronghold of moraic theory, to be the empirical basis of the paper. It is a complex system, involving syllable structure and stress assignment, quantity sensitivity and syllabically-determined stress shift. Moreover, its analysis requires the deployment of a great deal of the theoretical machinery that has been (independently) developed in moraic stress theory. These phenomena, although recurrent cross-linguistically, remained outside the scope of Scheer and Szigetvari’s work. The present paper provides an account of these patterns using the innovative grid-based notion of weight incorporation (Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti. 2014. A Field Theory of Stress: the role of empty nuclei in stress systems. SOAS – University of London, PhD Dissertation.). The analysis is also brought to bear on Cairene Arabic, which is shown to differ from Palestinian in a single parameter setting. Significant independent support is provided by the extension of the analysis to the phenomenon of vowel shortening (both metrical and final), whose distribution and motivation are shown to follow in a straightforward manner from the general account. The paper also improves on previous analyses of meter in Strict CV, as for the first time in Strict CV metrics, a computational component is explicitly formalized. We conclude with a comparison to a moraic analysis of the phenomena discussed, and argue on principled grounds that the Strict CV account is a worthy competitor to such an analysis. Like its predecessor from 2005, the present account recognizes only one unit relevant for meter: the nucleus. No appeal is made to moras, syllables, feet or extrametricality.

scholarly journals Against Root Faithfulness in Cupeño Stress

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony D Yates
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Support ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Left Edge ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Primary Stress ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Lexical Accent

This paper develops a new, optimality-theoretic analysis of word-level stress assignment in Cupeño (Takic, Uto-Aztecan). I argue that primary stress is assigned to the leftmost lexically accented (i.e. stress-preferring) morpheme, else to the word's left edge. I contend that this analysis is simpler and better explains the Cupeño data than previous accounts, which assume that special faithfulness constraints privilege the accentual properties of roots over those of other affixes. The typological implications of this renanalysis of Cupeño stress are then discussed; without empirical support from Cupeño, it is suggested that "root faithfulness" plays no role in determining word stress in lexical accent systems cross-linguistically.

Weight sensitivity and syllable codas in Srinagar Koshur

2012 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
SADAF MUNSHI ◽  
MEGAN J. CROWHURST
Keyword(s):  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Syllable Weight ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
As Stress

This paper describes and analyses the pattern of word stress found in the standard dialect of Koshur (Kashmiri) spoken in Srinagar. The significance of Koshur for studies of stress lies in that taken together, its pattern of stress assignment and a pervasive pattern of syncope conspire to produce a four-way syllable weight distinction that has sometimes been expressed as the scale CVːC>CVː>CVC>CV. The interesting feature of this type of scale is that closed syllables, CVːC and CVC are preferred as stress peaks over open syllables with vowels of the same length. Other researchers have noted that in languages with this scale, or the abbreviated ternary version CVː>CVC>CV, CVC syllables behave ambiguously with respect to stress. They seem to be heavy in relation to CV when CVː syllables are absent. In a stress clash context however, CVC defers to CVː. ‘Mora-only’ accounts of other languages with this scale have interpreted the ambiguous behaviour of CVC as evidence that CVC syllables are bimoraic where their behaviour seems to group them with CVː but monomoraic elsewhere (e.g. Rosenthall & van der Hulst 1999, Morén 2000). To account for the CVːC>CVː effect, mora-only accounts have been forced to assume that CVːC are trimoraic. We show that a mora-only analysis does not offer a satisfying account of the Koshur facts, and we argue instead that the origin of the CVC>CV and CVːC>CVː effects is the presence of a coda that branches from the final mora of a syllable, making the closed syllables more harmonic as prosodic heads. Under this view, branchingness emerges as another dimension of the mora, along with moraic quantity and the quality of segments linked to moras, which contributes to syllable prominence.

Structural Factors Affecting the Assignment of Word Stress in German

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo B. Röttger ◽  
Ulrike Domahs ◽  
Marion Grande ◽  
Frank Domahs
Keyword(s):  
Strong Predictor ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Main Stress ◽  
Orthographic Coding ◽  
Final Syllable ◽  
Shed Light

This paper aims to shed light on regularities underlying German stress assignment. The results of a pseudoword production task suggest that rhyme complexity of the final syllable is a strong predictor of main stress position in German. We also found that antepenult rhyme complexity and orthographic rhyme structure have significant effect on stress assignment. In general, the effects seem to be probabilistic rather than categorical. Our results suggest that phonological theories of German word stress need to allow for multiple probabilistic factors, including syllabic structure of all stressable syllables and orthographic coding.*

scholarly journals The stability of word stress across Mixean languages

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Jany
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Stress System ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Edge Orientation ◽  
Syllable Weight ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Phonological Structure ◽  
Heavy Syllable ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Stress Patterns

<p>Word stress patterns have been widely discussed for individual languages and in typological work (Van der Hulst 2010), but there are very few comparative studies within language families and across dialects. This paper examines stress patterns in Mixean varieties and how they relate to the phonological distinctions among these varieties. The term ‘variety’ is applied here as in a number of cases it has yet to be determined whether a variety constitutes its own language or a dialect.</p><p>Word stress does not vary in Mixean languages, always falling on the rightmost heavy root syllable, but roots often represent the only heavy syllable(s) in a word. As a result, syllable weight plays only a minimal role in stress assignment. Rather, the stress system rests upon edge-orientation and morphological conditioning. If it relied to a greater extent on the phonological structure of words, some deviation would be expected, given that variation among Mixean languages is primarily phonologically based. This paper demonstrates how weight-sensitive stress patterns can remain stable across related languages even in light of major phonological differences.</p>

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