Accent 1 is very much accepted in the literature as the default tonal marker in Scandinavian languages. Consequently, stems and affixes are almost always specified for accent 2. Only rarely in some analyses is accent 1 specified for affixes, but never for stems. We believe that under these conditions, the resulting morphology/phonology interaction is rather complex, having to include special rules of accent marking, floating tones, deaccenting together with inexplicable exceptions. In our analysis of the tonal systems of Swedish and Norwegian, accent 1 is the lexically specified accent and accent 2 is postlexically assigned. Words and affixes may be lexically specified for accent 1, which inevitably dominates. Consequently, if a morphologically complex word includes a lexically specified affix or stem, the entire word will bear accent 1, giving us patterns of alternations like beskriva 1 , skriva 2 . This analysis enables us to account for all the facts almost exceptionlessly, with no special tonal rules, constraints or templates.

Languages such as Swedish use suprasegmental information such as tone, over and above segments, to mark lexical contrast. Theories differ with respect to the abstractness and specification of tone in the mental lexicon. In a forced choice task, we tested Swedish listeners' responses to words with segmentally identical first syllables differing in tonal contours (characterized as Accents 1 and 2). We assumed Accent 1 to be lexically specified for a subset of words and hypothesized that this specification would speed up word accent identification. As was predicted, listeners were fastest in choosing the tonally correct word when the accent was lexically specified. We conclude that the processing of surface tonal contours is governed by their underlying lexical structure with tonal specification.

No abstract

In Modern Swedish certain groups of morphemes are systematically involved in word forms that would be expected to get Accent 2 but that surface with Accent 1. Thus, Swedish infinitives usually get Accent 2 (grip-a ‘seize’), but in combination with certain prefixes, that were borrowed from Middle Low German, infinitives will always be Accent 1 (be-grip-a ‘comprehend’). The dominance and systematic occurrence of Accent 1 suggests viewing it as the lexically specified accent. In this article we are looking for historical facts about these types of words and morphemes to see if we can draw any conclusions concerning lexical accent specification for native vs. non-native morphemes. By investigating the comments on rhymes and accents in the 18th-century poetic manual by Anders Nicander (1707–1781) in combination with his own rhymed verse we can provide information about 18th-century and modern tonal oppositions in Swedish.