Acoustic correlates of lexical accent in Turkish

Abstract

Phonologists have long discussed the properties of 'stress' in Turkish, though there are some authors that suggest that Turkish is actually a pitch-accent language. As a first step in determining whether Turkish should be grouped with pitch-accent languages such as Basque and Japanese or with stress-accent languages such as English, this experimental study provides a detailed phonetic examination of word-level accent in Turkish. Seven female native speakers of Turkish were recorded saying 40 target words in three repetitions. The results show that there are significant differences in duration, peak amplitude, and peak F0 between words with final vs. non-final lexical accent. The magnitude of the duration differences, however, is not likely to be sufficiently perceptible to be a reliable cue to accent placement. The F0 peaks were dramatically different between lexically accented and unaccented syllables. A discriminant analysis confirms that F0 is the most robust cue, followed by intensity and then duration. The current study also provides a method for determining lexical accent placement in words where accent placement has been disputed. That is, a marked drop in F0 signals that the syllable preceding the drop contains the lexical accent.

Towards a model of intonational phonology of Turkish: Neutral intonation

“…Kamalı (2011) provides a unified account of different pitch accents and edge tones suggested by Kan (2009) and builds a phonological model of Turkish intonation. This model is built upon two main assumptions: (i) following Levi (2005), the author considers Turkish as a lexical pitch-accent language, and (ii) finally stressed words are suggested to be not lexically stressed. In this model, the words with a nonfinal stress are claimed to have a lexical pitch accent, H*+L, as in Tokyo Japanese (Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986, Pierrehumbert & Beckman 1988) and the words with a final stress are claimed to have no lexical specification.…”

Sahaptin: Between stress and tone

“…Is YS simply a stress system with pitch as the phonetic correlate of stress (like Turkish, Levi 2005)? An impediment to this view, in favor of the pitch accent analysis, is that word accent interacts with intonation.…”

Opacity in Crimean Tatar: The Interaction of Vowel Harmony and Syncope

“…The default stress position is word-final, as shown it (9). It has been argued for Turkish (Levi 2005) that its default final stress is postlexical: it is predictable, not "strong," and native speakers are not aware of it. This seems to be the case for the related CT as well, even though more work is needed on the precise description of CT stress.…”