Stress and accent: acoustic correlates of metrical prominence in Catalan

Authors

  • Lluïsa Astruc Faculty of Education and Languages, The Open University, UK Author
  • Pilar Prieto ICREA-Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2006/01/0012/000012

Abstract

This study examines the phonetic correlates of stress and accent in Catalan, analyzing syllable duration, spectral balance, vowel quality, and overall intensity in two stress [stressed, unstressed] and in two accent conditions [accented, unaccented]. Catalan reveals systematic phonetic differences between accent and stress, consistent with previous work on Dutch, English, and Spanish (Slujter & van Heuven 1996a, 1996b; Campbell & Beckman 1997, Ortega-Llebaría & Prieto 2006). Duration, spectral balance, and vowel quality are reliable acoustic correlates of stress, while accent is acoustically marked by overall intensity and pitch. Duration, at least in Catalan, is not a reliable indicator of accent since accentual lengthening was found only in speakers who produced some accents with a wider pitch range.

 

References

Astruc, L. 2004. The intonation of extra-sentential elements. Doctoral dissertation. University of Cambridge. Available from www. astruc.info.

Bolinger, D.L. 1958. A theory of pitch accent in English. Word 14, 109-149.

Campbell, N. and Beckman, M. 1997. Stress, prominence and spectral tilt. In Botinis, A.; Kouroupetroglou, G; and G. Crayiannis (eds.), Intonation: theory, models and applications. Proc. of and ESCA Workshop, Athens, Greece.

Fry, D.B. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech 1, 126-152.

Halliday, M.A.K. 1967. Intonation and grammar in British English. Mouton.

Sluijter, A. and van Heuven, V. 1996a. Spectral balance as an acoustic correlate of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 100 (4). 2471- 2485.

Sluijter, A. and van Heuven, V. 1996b. Acoustic correlates of linguistic stress and accent in Dutch and American English. Proc. of ICSL, 96. Philadelphia: Applied Science and Engineering Laboratories, Alfred I duPont Institue, 630-633.

Turk, A. E. and Sawush, J. R. 1997. The domain of accentual lengthening in American English. Journal of Phonetics 25, 25-41.

Turk, A. E. and White, L. 1999. Structural influences on accentual lengthening. Journal of Phonetics 27, 171-206.

Ortega-Llebaria, M. and Prieto, P. 2006. Stress and accent in Catalan and Spanish: patterns of duration, vowel quality, overall intensity, and spectral balance. Proc. Speech Prosody. Dresden, Germany. 337-340.

Vanderslice, R. and Ladefoged, P. 1972. Binary suprasegmental features and transformational word-accentuation rules. Language. 48: 819-38.

Downloads

Published

01-01-2006

How to Cite

Stress and accent: acoustic correlates of metrical prominence in Catalan. (2006). Linguistic Proceedings Series, 1(1), 73-76. https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2006/01/0012/000012

Share