No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Although it has been proposed that all languages may have some lexical stress property, recent studies of (Standard) Indonesian have concluded, based primarily on perception, that lexical stress is not present in this language. While it is philosophically problematic to prove the non-existence of a phenomenon, we examine data from a large-scale production study for both direct and indirect evidence of stress, contributing to the growing body of literature in this field. In the first case, evidence is sought that indicates that a particular syllable in a word exhibits acoustic properties typically associated with prominence (i.e. fundamental frequency (f0), duration, intensity, vowel quality). In the second case, evidence of enhancement of these properties on a particular syllable under focus is sought, for a more abstract stress property that is not overtly manifested at the word level. Although we find no evidence of lexical prominence, we observe acoustic patterns consistent with a higher level prominence corresponding to focus, manifested by strong (Intonational Phrase) boundary properties. Overall, our findings reveal that there is strong support for a class of languages lacking lexical stress, and in the absence of a stressed syllable to enhance, focus may be manifested prosodically as boundary properties.

The acoustic properties of stress and focus prominence are examined in a large, systematically structured corpus of Arabic collected in Amman, Jordan. A modified version of the Functional Load Hypothesis correctly predicts that duration, a contrastive property of Arabic vowels, will not constitute the main cue of either prominence type as this would obscure its phonemic role. Instead, both Binary Logistic Regression Analyses and descriptive analyses indicate F0 as the main cue for both types of prominence. In addition, duration and F0 patterns reveal word-final lengthening and boundary effects. These lead to a modification of the stress assignment algorithm that permits the construction of uneven trimoraic trochees, as opposed to limiting feet to bimoraic trochees.