Lexical stress in Polish: evidence from focus and phrase-position differentiated production data

Abstract

We examine acoustic patterns of word stress in Polish in data with carefully separated phrase-and word-level prominences. We aim to verify claims in the literature regarding the phonetic and phonological status of lexical stress (both primary and secondary) in Polish and to contribute to a better understanding of prosodic prominence and boundary interactions. Our results show significant effects of primary stress on acoustic parameters such as duration, f0 functionals and spectral emphasis expected for a stress language. We do not find clear and systematic acoustic evidence for secondary stress.

Dimensions of Segmental Variability: Interaction of Prosody and Surprisal in Six Languages

“…In other words, where in a specific language a parameter is not used for marking prominence, it will also not be available as a correlate of predictability. For example, contrary to English, we do not expect surprisal to greatly affect duration in Polish because of the weak correlation of duration with prominence in this language (Malisz and Wagner, 2012;Malisz andŻygis, 2018).…”

Distance vs time. Acoustic and articulatory consequences of reduced vowel duration in Polish

“…As remarked in Malisz and Żygis (2018), in languages where stress is predictable, we would expect the cues for stress to be less stable than in the languages where stress is not predictable from the structure. It is not surprising, then, to find quite a lot of discussion of the phonetic correlates of stress in Polish as they are not unambiguous.…”

“…Traditionally, it has been understood as based on the variation in intensity (D luska, 1950). And indeed, instrumental studies such as Crosswhite (2003) and Malisz and Żygis (2018) confirm the effect of spectral emphasis (higher relative intensity in higher frequency bands). However, other sources identify also different correlates of stress in Polish.…”

“…However, other sources identify also different correlates of stress in Polish. Dogil (1999), Jassem (2003), and Malisz and Żygis (2018) have shown that the primary stress in Polish correlates with higher f0. A number of authors including Jassem (1962), Nowak (2006) or Malisz and Żygis (2018) observe also a small but robust effect of syllable duration.…”

“…Dogil (1999), Jassem (2003), and Malisz and Żygis (2018) have shown that the primary stress in Polish correlates with higher f0. A number of authors including Jassem (1962), Nowak (2006) or Malisz and Żygis (2018) observe also a small but robust effect of syllable duration. Some authors describe an effect of secondary stress for words containing more than three syllables but our study did not include words longer than 3 syllables.…”