Stress: Phonotactic and Phonetic Evidence

Abstract

Stress can be signaled through a number of different acoustic properties, including increased duration, greater intensity, and higher fundamental frequency. Stress may also affect segmental and syllable structure. Typically, stressed syllables trigger qualitative fortition and/or lengthening, whereas unstressed syllables are associated with lenition and/or shortening. To take an example of a stress‐driven fortition process affecting syllable structure, Dutch (Booij 1995) inserts an intervocalic glottal stop as an onset to stressed vowels; epenthesis does not interrupt vowel sequences in which the second vowel is unstressed. We thus have pairs such as [ˈxa.ɔs] ‘chaos’ and [[a.ˈˀɔr.ta] ‘aorta’, in which the presence of glottal stop is predictable from stress. American English provides well‐described cases of lenition in unstressed syllables. For example, post‐vocalic coronal stops weaken to taps before unstressed syllabic sounds, e.g. /s i ti/ → [s i ɾi] ‘city’. Furthermore, most unstressed vowels reduce to schwa, e.g. ['kan,tεkst] context vs . [kən'tεkstʃuəl] contextual , or may delete in certain contexts delete, e.g. [ˈtme i ɾoʊ] ∼ [ˈtəme i toʊ] tomato , [ˈksændɹə] ∼ [kəˈsændɹə] Cassandra .

The uniqueness of metrical structure: rhythmic phonotactics in Huariapano

“…Fougeron & Keating 1997, Beckman 1998, Smith 2005, Becker et al 2011, Gordon 2011. After all, the sole motivation for a multiplanar approach comes from the apparent impossibility of reconciling stress assignment with rhythmic [h]-epenthesis under a single metrical parse.…”

Gradient clash, faithfulness, and sonority sequencing effects in Russian compound stress

“…Intensity is also a cue for English compound stress, though not in all sentential contexts (Morrill 2012). As a reviewer points out, for English, the second syllable of two prominent syllables in a word can be perceived as more prominent even if it has the same intensity as the first one; languages can obviously differ on the phonetics of stress realization (see Gordon [2011] for a recent overview).…”

The odd-parity input problem in metrical stress theory

“…The limitation of rhythmic shortening to trochaic languages is also well established (Hayes 1985, Kager 1993, though it appears that a language must also be quantity-sensitive to allow rhythmic shortening (Mellander 2003). Asymmetries in rhythmic lengthening, however, appear to be finer-grained than supposed in much of the previous segmental rule application (Leer 1985, Nespor & Vogel 1986, Rice 1992, Hayes 1995, Vaysman 2009, Gordon 2011. Foot structure often plays a central role in capturing differences in the behaviour of vowels in unstressed syllables (Kager 1989, Dresher & Lahiri 1991, Bye 1996, Hermans 2011.…”

“…Foot structure often plays a central role in capturing differences in the behaviour of vowels in unstressed syllables (Kager 1989, Dresher & Lahiri 1991, Bye 1996, Hermans 2011. These are just a few of the possible citations (see Hayes 1995, Gordon 2011and Hermans 2011 for partial summaries). The requirement that feet be binary -either bimoraic or disyllabic -is also well motivated.…”