Brain waves and syllabic stress clash
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2022/13/0033/000575Keywords:
Syllabic stress, Stress clash, French, Delta brain oscillationsAbstract
The resolution process for stress clash conditions, where two consecutive syllables are both (morphologically) stressed, has been well documented for lexically stressed languages such as English or Italian. However, non-lexically stressed languages such as Korean or French present greater variation in their mechanisms of stress clash resolution. Acoustic analyses based on spontaneous speech data from the ORFEO corpus show that there is no stress shift of the first stressed syllable when the interval between the phonologically stressed vowels exceeds approximately 250 ms. This interval depends on speech rate: a slower speech rate tends to preserve the morphologically stressed syllable in its original position, whereas a faster speech rate reduces the interval between stressed vowels below 250 ms and may trigger stress shift. This 250 ms threshold appears to be linked to the minimum interval required for delta brain oscillations to synchronise the perception of stressed syllables.
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