This study examines the relation between prosody and sentence-type perception in Greek, through a perceptual experiment using synthetic hum sound analogs of statements, polar/wh-questions and commands. The results indicate that sentence types may be partially identified through prosody. The identification rates were not very high, due to the nature of the synthetic stumuli. Wh-questions were easily perceived, while for the other sentence types falling boundary tones seem to be misleading.

The present investigation examines palatal production as well as the relation of phonology and phonetics in Greek. In accordance with one production experiment, the results indicate: (1) palatal productions that surface from one underlying segment are significantly longer than palatal productions that surface from two underlying segments, (2) palatal productions are voice assimilated with the preceding stop and fricative consonant production and, (3), the locus frequencies of male palatal productions are in the area of 1800-2000 Hz.

The present study examines the temporal and spectral characteristics of Greek fricatives (duration and spectral moments, i.e. mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis) as distinctive cues for their place of articulation. The effects of voicing, speaker's gender and post-fricative vowel on both duration and spectral moments are also investigated. The results indicate that noise duration does not distinguish fricatives in terms of place of articulation. However, voiceless fricatives have longer durations than voiced ones. Spectral moments distinguish fricatives in terms of place of articulation, except for the labiodental from dental place.

The present study is an experimental investigation of tonal alignment and syllabification as a function of stress production in Greek. The results of a production experiment show that the onset of the tonal rise alignment of the stressed syllable is within a 0-48 ms region. This tonal alignment is associated with the first intervocalic consonant, unless the phonotactic structure of the syllable on the right is violated. These findings indicate that tonal production structure and tonal alignment are major acoustic correlates of syllabification. On the other hand, the phonotactic structure of the syllable on the right overrides any syllabification on the basis of the open syllable structure, which is predominant in Greek.

This is a study of intonation and polar questions in Greek. The results indicate that there is a rising-falling tonal structure at the right edge of polar questions. However, the alignment of both tonal rising and tonal peak depend on the position of focus as well as lexical stress. Thus, in the context of initial and medial focus productions, the tonal rising is aligned with the onset of the final stressed syllable whereas, in the context of final focus production, the tonal rising is aligned with the onset of the last syllable regardless of the position of lexical stress. On the other hand, the tonal peak is aligned with the post-stressed syllable in the context of initial and medial focus productions whereas, in the context of final focus production, the tonal peak is aligned with the nucleus of the last syllable. However, the earlier the lexical stress production, the earlier the tonal rising as well as the tonal peak in all focus contexts.