Bidirectional stress systems with internal lapses are rare and their existence has been recently called into question (Newlin-Łukowicz 2012). The present paper reports an acoustic study of secondary stress in Ukrainian based on polysyllabic words with lexical stress located at or near the right edge of the word. The results indicate that Ukrainian has an iteration of secondary stresses from the left edge towards the lexical stress, rather than in the opposite direction. This characteristic makes it metrically related to bidirectional stress systems with internal lapses (e.g. Polish), which invalidates the argument against such systems and proves the empirical adequacy of the metrical theories designed to account for these stress patterns.

In her study published in this journal, Newlin-Łukowicz (2012) calls into question the existence of bidirectional stress systems. The argument hinges on the failure to detect acoustic correlates of word-internal subsidiary stress in Polish, the language hitherto considered to be a classic example of metrical bidirectionality. This paper reappraises the issue, reporting on an acoustic study of paired five- and six-syllable words in Polish (e.g. ˎpomido′rowy – ˎpomiˎdoro-′wego). The results indicate that the words differ significantly with respect to relative consonant duration (PVI values) in the onset of the third syllable, depending on whether the syllable bears subsidiary stress (as in six-syllable words) or remains unstressed (as in five-syllable words). Similar effects are reported in the initial syllable, but not in the second syllable, which remains consistently unstressed. The conclusion is that Polish has iterative stress, corroborating its traditional description as having a bidirectional stress system.

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Abstract Recent work suggests that Ukrainian represents a typologically rare bidirectional stress system with internal lapses, i.e. sequences of unstressed syllables in the vicinity of primary stress (Łukaszewicz and Mołczanow 2018a, b). The system is more intricate than the hitherto known bidirectional systems (e.g. Polish), and thus interesting from the theoretical perspective, as it involves interaction between free lexical stress and secondary stresses. Lexical and subsidiary prominence in Ukrainian have been shown to be expressed acoustically in terms of increased duration of the whole syllable. This leaves open the question of the role of classic vowel parameters in shaping prominence effects in this language. The present study fills this gap by investigating vowel duration, intensity, and F0 as potential acoustic correlates of primary and secondary stress in Ukrainian. It focuses on words with primary stress on the fifth syllable. Such words are predicted to have secondary stress on the first and third syllables. The results point to statistically significant lengthening of vowels carrying lexical stress as well as of those in the initial syllable, but not in the third syllable. A possible explanation is that other parameters, e.g. consonant duration, may be crucial in the case of word-internal subsidiary stress in Ukrainian.

Most available studies of prominence have been based on experimental designs in which potential correlates of stress are simultaneously involved in marking other aspects of linguistic structure. However, the confounding impact of factors such as segmental structure or boundary effects has been widely acknowledged in the phonetic literature but rarely submitted to rigorous scrutiny (e.g. [1], [2], [3]). The present study investigates acoustic correlates of lexical and rhythmic stress in Ukrainian in an experiment designed to control for the potential segmental and boundary confounds. Ukrainian has been reported to have both word-initial and word-final secondary stress ([4], [5], [6]); therefore, metrical prominence effects in word-initial and word-final positions coincide with potential boundary effects. In the present pilot study, based on four-syllable words collected from four Ukrainian speakers, we compare pairs of words having the same number of syllables and the same segmental structure, but differing in terms of the position of lexical stress and rhythmic structure. The results point to statistically significant differences in vocalic (and to some extent also consonantal) duration which depends on the presence versus absence of stress.