Prosody of contrastive focus in estonian

Sahkai, Heete; Kalvik, Mari-Liis; Mihkla, Meelis

doi:10.21437/interspeech.2013-91

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 6 publications

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“…Rochemont (2016: 45). In Estonian, prefocal given information has been found to be accented (Sahkai & Mihkla 2017), while post-focal elements following a contrastive focus have been found to be predominantly deaccented (Sahkai et al 2013). Therefore, the target words were elicited post-focally in the present work, although the post-focal position may induce other undesirable effects like the compression of pitch range (cf.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Acoustic correlates of primary word stress in Estonian

Sahkai,

Mihkla

2024

ESUKA-JEFUL

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This study investigates the acoustic correlates of primary word stress in Estonian. The results contribute to several open questions concerning the acoustic correlates of word stress: Does fixed word stress have acoustic correlates? Can duration be the primary acoustic correlate of word stress in a language with contrastive segment length? Is F0 an exclusive correlate of phrase stress or does it also correlate with word stress? The study finds that despite being fixed, Estonian word stress significantly correlates with acoustic features. The primary correlate is F0, followed by vowel quality, overall intensity, duration and spectral tilt. The results support the functional load hypothesis which predicts that duration is not the primary acoustic correlate of word stress in languages with contrastive segment length. The results do not support the assumption that F0 exclusively correlates with phrasal stress and intonational pitch accents. Kokkuvõte. Heete Sahkai, Meelis Mihkla: Eesti keele primaarse sõnarõhu akustilised korrelaadid. Artiklis tutvustatakse uurimust, mille eesmärk oli tuvastada eesti keele primaarse sõnarõhu akustilised korrelaadid sõltumatult vältest ja lauserõhust. Uurimuse tulemused täiendavad arutelu mitme lahtise küsimuse üle sõnarõhu akustiliste korrelaatide valdkonnas: kas ka fikseeritud sõnarõhul on akustilised korrelaadid? kas kestus saab olla sõnarõhu primaarne korrelaat keeles, kus on kontrastiivne häälikupikkus? kas põhitoon korreleerub ainult lauserõhu või ka sõnarõhuga? Uurimuses leitakse, et kuigi eesti keeles on fikseeritud esisilbirõhk, korreleerub see oluliselt akustiliste tunnustega. Sõnarõhu tugevaim korrelaat on põhitoon, millele järgnevad vokaalikvaliteet, üldintensiivsus, kestus ja spektri kalle. Tulemused toetavad funktsionaalse koormuse hüpoteesi, mille kohaselt kestus ei ole peamine sõnarõhu korrelaat kontrastiivse häälikupikkusega keeltes. Tulemused ei toeta aga eeldust, et põhitoon korreleerub ainult lauserõhu ja tooniaktsentidega.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Acoustic correlates of primary word stress in Estonian

Sahkai,

Mihkla

2024

ESUKA-JEFUL

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Interactive Prosodic Marking of Focus, Boundary and Newness in Mandarin

Wang

Ding

2017

Phonetica

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The current study investigates whether and how focus, phrase boundary and newness can be simultaneously marked in speech prosody in Mandarin Chinese. Homophones were used to construct three syntactic structures that differed only in boundary condition, focus was elicited by preceding questions, while newness of postboundary words was manipulated as whether they had occurred in the previous text. Systematic analysis of F0 and duration showed that (1) duration was a reliable correlate of boundary strength regardless of focus location, while involvement of F0 was only in terms of lowering of phrase-final F0 minima and raising of phrase-initial F0 minima at a relatively strong boundary, (2) postfocus compression (PFC) of F0 was applied across all boundaries, including those with long silent pauses (over 200 ms), and postfocus F0 was lowered to almost the same degree in all boundary conditions, and (3) newness of postfocus words had no systematic effect on F0 or duration. These results indicate that not only functionally focus is independent of prosodic structure and newness, but also phonetically its realization is separate from boundary marking. Focus is signaled mainly through pitch range adjustments, which can occur even across phrase breaks, whereas boundaries are mostly signaled by duration adjustments.

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Makkan Arabic does not have post-focus compression: a production and perception study

Alzaidi

2022

Phonetica

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Post-focus compression (PFC), in which words following focus are compressed in F 0 and intensity, is recently found to be effective in encoding focus. Recent studies find that PFC is present in Egyptian, Hijazi and Lebanese Arabic, and hence they are classified as +PFC languages. However, there are languages from the same family language which differ mainly in terms of the presence and absence of PFC. The current study investigated the production and perception of prosodic focus marking in Makkan Arabic, an under-researched Arabic dialect. Systematic acoustic analyses and statistical tests show that (a) the on-focus word is realized by expanding the excursion size, increasing the F 0 and strengthening the intensity of its stressed syllable, (b) information and contrastive focus are not prosodically distinguishable, (c) Makkan Arabic lacks PFC, and (d) focus recognition is low compared to Hijazi Arabic (+PFC), Taiwanese and Taiwan Mandarin (other −PFC languages). The new findings, taken together with recent findings, suggest that (1) the prosodic encoding of focus is different across Arabic dialects productively and perceptually, and (2) the on-focus raising is not a sufficient factor in recognizing prosodic cues to focus. These results contribute to broadening our understanding of different prosodic focus markings cross-linguistically and cross-dialectally.

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Prosody of contrastive focus in estonian

Cited by 5 publications

References 6 publications

Acoustic correlates of primary word stress in Estonian

Acoustic correlates of primary word stress in Estonian

Interactive Prosodic Marking of Focus, Boundary and Newness in Mandarin

Makkan Arabic does not have post-focus compression: a production and perception study

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