Prosodic domains

We investigate glide insertion to break a hiatus between central vowels (V1_V2) in four regions of the Northern variety of European Portuguese (two urban and two rural), three discourse modalities and two age groups. We show that the process is optional and is bound by the intonational phrase domain in all regions. Both prosodic and sociolinguistic factors affect the frequency of occurrence of the phenomenon in variable ways among regions. Globally, insertion is more frequent when V2 bears higher levels of prominence and when V1 belongs to a clitic. Regions further north tend to insert more and (semi-)spontaneous tasks favor insertion. Age does not correlate with the frequency of insertion. We discuss the implications of these findings for the understanding of the synchronic status of the phenomenon.

This article discusses the nature and complexity of phonological representations, and more specifically the prosodic representations, with a focus on patterns of assimilation or preservation of final /r/ in underlying /lr/ and /nr/ sequences in Old Icelandic. I evaluate the role played by hierarchical syllable structures, and syllable node labels, in constituting barriers to assimilation, and highlight some issues inherent in Reiss’ (1994) syllable-structure driven approach to Old Icelandic. I then discuss a completely flat framework for prosodic representations, Universal Boundary Theory (UBT; Andersson, 2020), and proceed to show that despite of its severely impoverished representational complexity, UBT provides a more elegant account of Old Icelandic that circumvents the problems inherent to the traditional analyses, and along the way brings phonological representations closer to animal comparanda. I argue that this latter aspect, coupled with the more familiar arguments from economy, makes UBT a better fit for the biolinguistic program (Chomsky, 2007).

The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody, Oxford: OUP. 19.1 The role of English in intonation research The mainstream standard varieties of English have played a major role in the development of models of intonation, with different traditions either side of the Atlantic. The British School emphasized auditory training, including the production and perception of representative intonation patterns-akin to training in the cardinal vowel system (Jones 1967)-and transcription using tonetic stress marks. These diacritics indicate the position of stressed syllables and pitch movements (falling, rising, level, falling-rising and rising-falling) across these and following syllables. The most important feature is the nuclear contour, the pitch movement over the stressed syllable of the most prominent word in the phrase 1 (nucleus) and any following syllables (tail). The British School has included didactic approaches (O'Connor and Arnold 1961), approaches focused on phonetic detail and broad coverage (Crystal 1969), and approaches considering the relationship with syntax and semantics/pragmatics (Halliday 1967; Tench 1996, amongst others). Meanwhile, American Structuralism focused on phonological structure, separating stressrelated intonation from intonation marking the edges of phrasal constituents (

RESUMO: O propósito deste projeto de iniciação científica, intitulado “Entoação ea Formação de Sintagmas Fonológicos no Português Brasileiro” 1 e vinculado ao projeto temático “Padrões Rítmicos, Fixação de Parâmetros e Mudança Lingüística - Fase II” (processo FAPESP: 98/ ...

We investigate glide insertion to break a hiatus between central vowels (V1_V2) in four regions of the Northern variety of European Portuguese (two urban and two rural), three discourse modalities and two age groups. We show that the process is optional and is bound by the intonational phrase domain in all regions. Both prosodic and sociolinguistic factors affect the frequency of occurrence of the phenomenon in variable ways among regions. Globally, insertion is more frequent when V2 bears higher levels of prominence and when V1 belongs to a clitic. Regions further north tend to insert more and (semi-)spontaneous tasks favor insertion. Age does not correlate with the frequency of insertion. We discuss the implications of these findings for the understanding of the synchronic status of the phenomenon.

This chapter surveys the intonation of Northern and Southern hemisphere mainstream and non-mainstream varieties of English as well as contact varieties spoken in Hong Kong, East, West and South Africa, Singapore, India, the South Pacific islands, the Caribbean and Malta. We explore the challenges posed by their diverging prosodic structures, in terms of both prominence and edge-marking, and observe that an account of the intonation of current-day ‘Englishes’ needs to cover a broad range of typological phenomena going well beyond what is present in the extensively researched mainstream varieties. This broad range in turn provides us with a chance to observe prosodic variation within one language that is usually only available to crosslinguistic studies.

Esta pesquisa busca verificar a correlação entre constituintes prosódicos, especificamente, a frase fonológica, e a Resolução de Choques de Acento. Chama-se de Choque de Acento a ocorrência de duas sílabas acentuadas linearmente adjacentes na frase. Em muitas línguas, observou-se que o Choque de Acento não pode ser mantido, ocorrendo o que chamamos de retração do acento, ou seja, o recuo para a esquerda do primeiro dos acentos adjacentes, como em Jesus Cristo, em que o acento da primeira palavra do sintagma é recuado para sua primeira sílaba, Jésus. Pesquisas anteriores, Abousalh (1997), sugerem que a retração do acento está restrita à frase fonológica, isto é, não ocorre quando os acentos adjacentes pertencem a constituintes prosódicos distintos. Neste caso, outros tipos de resolução podem acontecer, como inserção de pausa ou alongamento da vogal. Quanto aos constituintes, sabemos que duas frases fonológicas podem, sob determinadas condições, ser reestruturadas em uma só. A partir disso, preparamos um experimento para observar se a retração do acento está restrita à frase fonológica. Para nossa verificação, elaboramos um corpus que apresenta acentos adjacentes em três contextos prosodicamente distintos: no interior da frase fonológica, na fronteira entre duas frases fonológicas e entre itens pertencentes a frases fonológicas diferentes, mas que podem ser reestruturadas em uma só. Cada contexto possui cinco frases que foram lidas e gravadas. Os informantes são falantes nativos do português, com idade entre 20 e 30 anos, 5 homens e 5 mulheres. As frases produzidas por eles foram apresentadas a juízes que avaliaram a existência ou não de retração de acento. Nessa primeira fase da pesquisa, análise auditiva, poucas ocorrências foram identificadas como apresentando retração do acento. Essa análise está sendo complementada com uma análise acústica dos dados que busca observar se outro tipo de resolução de choque pode ser sistematicamente identificada.

O objetivo deste artigo é a análise das estratégias prosódicas de desambiguação de sentenças em português brasileiro (PB), em contexto de ambiguidade sintática e choque acentual.² Nossa hipótese é a de que a desambiguação dessas sentenças se dê através de diferentes estratégias prosódicas de desfazimento do choque acentual. Para testar essa hipótese, foram realizados experimentos de produção e de percepção com falantes do PB. Os resultados obtidos foram analisados à luz da Fonologia Prosódica (NESPOR; VOGEL, 1986) e, em termos entoacionais, à luz da Fonologia Entoacional (PIERREHUMBERT, 1980; LADD, 1996, 2008). Nossos resultados revelam que: (i) quando o desfazimento do choque de acentos se dá por retração acentual, há pistas da formação de um único sintagma fonológico e a interpretação é a de que a segunda palavra envolvida no choque se refere à imediatamente precedente; (ii) quando o desfazimento do choque se dá pela inserção de pausas e/ou pela atribuição de um acento tonal a cad...

O estudo da interface sintaxe e fonologia está presente na teoria gerativista desde os primeiros estudos de Chomsky, Halle & Lukoff (1956) e Chomsky & Halle (1968) sobre como a distribuição de acentos no inglês está relacionada também a aspectos morfológicos e sintáticos. Desde então, surgiram muitos trabalhos que trataram de fenômenos que exibem interação entre os componentes fonológico e sintático. A precedência linear, que restringe a ordem dos constituintes, por exemplo, tem sido explorada como fonte de evidência da estrutura sintática de expressões complexas por diversos autores (KAYNE, 1994; WILLIAMS, 2003; FOX & PESETSKY, 2005). Nem todos os aspectos da interface, no entanto, recebem a mesma atenção; a prosódia 1 , por exemplo, é muitas vezes considerada pouco confiável como evidência da estrutura sintática. A desconfiança em relação à prosódica como diagnóstico parte, algumas vezes, da dificuldade em se estabelecer a estrutura 1 A prosódia pode ser definida, segundo Ladd (1996), como se referindo ao uso de características fonéticas suprassegmentais, tais como entoação, ritmo e modulações de volume para expressar significados pragmáticos no nível da sentença, de forma linguisticamente estruturada.

This work aims at exploring the phasing of vowels across prosodic boundaries, by analyzing ultrasound data relating to the production of V(#)CV (/i#ba/) sequences by three speakers of Italian. Sequences are inserted in sentences in such a way that C corresponds to the beginning of prosodic domains of various levels and it is strengthened depending on the type of boundary. The influence of prosodic boundaries is investigated on postboundary vowels by means of ultrasound data, which show that a smaller degree of (preservative) coarticulation is found when strong rather than weak prosodic boundaries are realized.

Com base em uma abordagem funcional-discursiva, que considera a ideia de língua em uso e a função comunicativo-interacional da linguagem, levando em conta fatores pragmáticos e não só estruturais, a noção de subordinação é revista. Segundo tal abordagem, as orações denominadas subordinadas pela tradição envolveriam dois grupos distintos: 1) encaixadas: aquelas que são dependentes e que desempenham um papel gramatical em constituência com um item lexical, grupo no qual se encontram as tradicionalmente chamadas substantivas e adjetivas restritivas; 2) hipotáticas: aquelas que são dependentes e que representam opções organizacionais para os falantes, das quais emergem proposições relacionais (inferências), podendo constituir, elas mesmas, unidades de informação à parte, grupo no qual se encontram as tradicionalmente conhecidas como adjetivas explicativas e adverbiais. Segundo considerações de Decat (1999), as estruturas de hipotaxe, cláusulas menos dependentes e que, portanto, podem formar uma unidade de informação à parte, estariam propensas ao desgarramento, ou seja, teriam a possibilidade de ocorrerem, sintaticamente, independentes na língua:

O desgarramento foi postulado por Decat (1999, 2011), com base numa análise funcional-discursiva, afirmando que algumas orações entre as tradicionalmente chamadas de ‘subordinadas’ pela tradição gramatical podem ocorrer soltas ou sozinhas. Instigado pelo fenômeno, este artigo realiza uma descrição prosódica de orações desgarradas e correlaciona-a a reflexões referentes aos fraseamento prosódico no Português do Brasil. Para isso, leva em conta resultados de Tenani (2002) e Serra (2009), concernentes à estrutura entoacional de orações adverbiais e aos correlatos acústicos do fraseamento no PB, respectivamente, que revelam ser o contorno entoacional L+H*H% relativo a sintagmas entoacionaisn (IPs) hierarquizados e a pausa ser a pista mais robusta no fraseamento de IPs. Foram analisados os parâmetros acústicos duração, pausa e contorno de F0 em 900 orações adverbais – 450 anexadas à oração matriz e outras 450 lexicalmente idênticas, desgarradas, produzidas por cinco informantes oriundas ...

The focus of this paper is on the relation between syntax and prosody, by discussing the role of the empty syntactic categories in the application of the stress shift rule. The discussion about the influence of empty categories on phonological processes is not new. Usually, phonology papers argue that the access to syntax is indirect, and there is no access to phonological empty syntactic categories (cf. NESPOR; VOGEL, 1986). However, Santos (2002) argues that phonological empty syntactic categories can intervene on the rhythmic organization of utterances. She defends that pro intervene on stress shift rule, while trace is not taken into account for that rule. In order to show that, she tests utterances with stress clash between verb and adverb. In this presentation, the syntactic structures with verbs which can have a transitive or intransitive reading are tested with pro. The hypothesis is that when there is a transitive reading, the stress clash can not be solved. In the sentences where the intransitive reading is possible, there is no pro between the verb and adverb, and the stress shift rule is allowed. This prediction can be used as an evidence which favors Galves (1989) analysis that null object in Brazilian Portuguese is a pro, and not a trace.

O presente artigo investiga a duração como possível correlato acústico do acento em Apurinã, levando-se em consideração as hipóteses levantadas por outros autores. Neste trabalho, investiga-se a duração de vogais em sílabas acentuadas, com acento secundário e sem acento, posto ser um possível correlato acústico que marca o acento em Apurinã, como sugerem outros trabalhos e estudos que afirmam ser esse um correlato recorrente nas línguas do mundo. O objetivo é verificar essas hipóteses, revendo os trabalhos anteriores sobre a língua e analisando novos dados, de modo a produzir resultados com base em informações independentes daquelas investigadas até então. Os resultados sugerem uma correlação apenas entre duração e acento primário e levantam questões sobre a sua natureza fonética, assim como uma questão relevante para a fonologia teórica sobre sílabas com vogais nasais que se comportam como sílabas pesadas ou bimoraicas.

This work aims at exploring the phasing of vowels across prosodic boundaries, by analyzing ultrasound data relating to the production of V(#)CV (/i#ba/) sequences by three speakers of Italian. Sequences are inserted in sentences in such a way that C corresponds to the beginning of prosodic domains of various levels and it is strengthened depending on the type of boundary. The influence of prosodic boundaries is investigated on postboundary vowels by means of ultrasound data, which show that a smaller degree of (preservative) coarticulation is found when strong rather than weak prosodic boundaries are realized. Index Terms: ultrasound, coarticulation, prosodic domains

This work aims at exploring the phasing of vowels across prosodic boundaries, by analyzing ultrasound data relating to the production of V(#)CV (/i#ba/) sequences by three speakers of Italian. Sequences are inserted in sentences in such a way that C corresponds to the beginning of prosodic domains of various levels and it is strengthened depending on the type of boundary. The influence of prosodic boundaries is investigated on postboundary vowels by means of ultrasound data, which show that a smaller degree of (preservative) coarticulation is found when strong rather than weak prosodic boundaries are realized.

Italian shows a length contrast in the consonantal system although there are peculiarities in the way lengthening is exploited in different varieties of the language [Lepschy, 1964; Schmid 1999]. For instance, speakers of central and southern varieties produce long consonants ...

Este artigo analisa a variação da duração de sílabas em diferentes domínios prosódicos e pretende oferecer mais ferramentas que permitam analisar estruturas sintáticas através de pistas fonológicas. Nossos resultados apontam que sílabas pós-tônicas em final de enunciado são significantemente mais longas do que nos outros domínios. Eles também mostram que, enquanto o tipo de vogal não afeta a duração das sílabas átonas, o vozeamento das consoantes afetou os resultados. Finalmente, não há variação de resultados a depender de as palavras serem parte do léxico ou logatomas.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Domínios Prosódicos. Duração. Interface Fonologia-Sintaxe.ABSTRACT This paper discusses syllable duration with respect to different prosodic domains and presents additional tools to analyze syntactic structures through phonological cues. Our results show that post-tonic syllables are longer at the intonational phrase boundary but not at other prosodic boundaries. The results also show that the type of ...

In the present study we analyzed vowel variation induced by carryover V-to-V coarticulation under the effect of pitch-accent as a function of vowel quality (using a minimally constrained intervening consonant to maximize V-to-V effects). We tested if /i/ is more resistant to coarticulation than /u/, and if both vowels show increased coarticulatory resistance in pitchaccented syllables. Our approach was unprecedented in the sense that it involved the analysis of parallel acoustic (F2) and articulatory (x-axis dorsum position) data in a great number of speakers (9 speaker), and real words of Hungarian. To analyze the degree of coarticulation, we adopted the locus equation approach, and fitted linear models on vowel onset and midpoint data, and calculated the differences between coarticulated and non-coarticulated vowels in both domains. To measure variability, we calculated standard deviations of midpoint F2 values and dorsum positions. The results showed that accent clearly exerted an effect on the phonetic realization of vowels, but the effect we found was dependent on both the vowel quality, and the domain (articulation/acoustics) at hand. Observation of the patterns we found in parallel acoustic and articulatory data warrants for reconsideration of the term 'coarticulatory resistance', and how it should be conceptualized.

This article presents the results of a study of verbal tone patterns in Kabarasi [lkb], a Kenyan Bantu language of the Luhya [luy] group. Kabarasi tone has a number of features that are common to Bantu languages (Kisseberth & Odden 2003, Downing 2011, Marlo & Odden 2017), including a lexical contrast between /H/ and /∅/ verb roots and a rich system of tonal inflection. Long H spans that extend across several words may be created by a pair of iterative, mutually feeding rules. One of these rules only applies across word boundaries and exhibits look-ahead effects; the other motivates a novel morphophonological domain: the limitative stem.*

"This dissertation explores the phonological representation and the phonetic realization of prosodic prominence in Persian. It comprises two related parts: the first part addresses prosodic phrasing in Persian sentences, while the second part deals with phonetic correlates of prosodic prominence by reporting conducted production and perception experiments. The phonological part is carried out within the framework of Prosodic Phonology, and aims at determining the prosodic structure of Persian from foot level, up to utterance level. By adopting Optimality Theory, it tries to explain how morphosyntax-phonology interface constraints together with prosodic markedness constraints form the prosodic structure of the language. It begins with foot level and suggests that in languages like Persian which have one non-iterative weight-insensitive edgemost stress per word, a single foot which is edge-aligned with the minimal Phonological Word best explains the prosodic pattern at word level. This part also focuses on prosodic differences between lexical words and weak function words (clitics) and shows that any attempt to describe the prosodic structure of Persian without addressing this crucial difference, will not be able to provide explanation for a wide range of phenomena. This study suggests that proclitics and enclitics behave asymmetrically in Persian: enclitics prosodize as affixal clitics, while proclitics are free clitics. Next, it addresses the problem of weak function words which are not a part of their preceding or following XPs, and demonstrates how the phonological well-formedness constraints determine the direction of cliticization in these XP-external function words. It also deals with the issue of clitic clusters in Persian which was not explored in the previous works. Another contribution of this study is reclassification of so-called exceptionally initial-stressed words.
This dissertation also deals with the longstanding problem of Ezafe constructions and by reviewing previous proposals on the prosodic structure of these constructions, based on phonological evidence and phonetic observations suggests that each lexical word in an Ezafe construction maps onto a Phonological Phrase, and the Ezafe morpheme phrases with its preceding material to satisfy the phonological well-formedness constraint ONSET. The prosodic structure of XP-external clitics such as the Ezafe morpheme is explained by adopting a syntax-prosody interface constraint namely MAP-XP, that bans two sister XPs inside a single Phonological Phrase. This study proposes a ranking of OT constraints by which the prosodic structure of Ezafe constructions and other syntactic phrases such as DPs and VPs can be predicted and explained uniformly. It also proposes that the interaction between morphosyntax-phonology interface constraints and prosodic markedness constraints determine prosodic constituents of all levels and their heads, and other constraints require the heads of phonological phrases to be associated with audible accents. The rightmost Phonological Phrase in an Intonational Phrase is the head. This head associates with an accent which is perceived more prominently than the other accents. One further issue explored here is the fact that in lexicalized Ezafe constructions and also in the ones containing given/old information, some words may appear without audible accent.
The phonetic difference between final and non-final accents is the subject of the second half of this dissertation. Previous research on Persian has shown that the main acoustic correlate of prosodic prominence is f0. This study reports production and perception experiment results conducted in order to answer the question whether final (nuclear) accents are perceived more prominently than the other ones only because they are not followed by any other accent, or because they are phonetically different from the non-final (pre-nuclear) accents. The results of production experiments reveal that nuclear accented syllables have a lower f0 range, but a longer duration in comparison with pre-nuclear accented ones. Other parameters such as overall intensity, spectral tilt and vowel quality do not differ significantly in the two types of accents. Perception experiments reveal that native listeners can indeed distinguish the two types of accents without having access to the portion of the utterance that follows the final accent. This proves that the two types of accents are phonetically different. Perception tests also show that the difference between the shapes of f0 curves in the two types of accents is the main acoustic parameter that helps the listeners distinguish them from each other. In pre-nuclear accented words, the f0 peak is at the right edge of the metrically strong syllable, and the curve has a rising slope at this point. In these syllables, the peak may even occur on the initial syllable of the following word. However, in the syllables associated with nuclear accents, the f0 peak is located inside the syllable, and the curve has a falling slope at the right edge of the syllable.
If the f0 at the right edge of a nuclear accented syllable is manipulated and raised so that the f0 peak is moved to the right edge, the native listeners will perceive the word containing this syllable as a pre-nuclear accented word. This study also shows that duration alone cannot cue the difference between the two types of accents. However, when accompanied by f0 changes, it can help the listeners distinguish the two accents more easily and more efficiently.
Downloadable at: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1314_hosseini_1.pdf
"

"""This paper investigates the prosodic structure of weak (stressless) function words in Persian within the framework of Prosodic Phonology. Weak function words in Persian are prosodic clitics that form phrases with the material following them (proclitics) or preceding them (enclitics). So far, only the prosody of enclitics has been studied in the literature. The present study proposes that, in Persian, enclitics are affixal clitics, while proclitics are free clitics. These proposals contribute to the findings in Prosodic Phonology that prosodic categories can in fact be recursive and non-exhaustive.

Publisherʼs version downloadable at:
http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=1&pid=diva2:657354""""

The study of articulatory features in speech requires highly sophisticated instruments. Most of them are available at the CRIL research centre (Centro di Ricerca Interdisciplinare sul Linguaggio -University of Salento -Lecce) where the equipment usually found for articulatory studies in the most advanced international research centres is accessible:

The study of articulatory features in speech requires highly sophisticated instruments. Most of them are available at the CRIL research centre (Centro di Ricerca Interdisciplinare sul Linguaggio -University of Salento -Lecce) where the equipment usually found for articulatory studies in the most advanced international research centres is accessible:

This work aims at exploring the phasing of vowels across prosodic boundaries, by analyzing ultrasound data relating to the production of V(#)CV (/i#ba/) sequences by three speakers of Italian. Sequences are inserted in sentences in such a way that C corresponds to the beginning of prosodic domains of various levels and it is strengthened depending on the type of boundary.
The influence of prosodic boundaries is investigated on post-boundary vowels by means of ultrasound data, which show that a smaller degree of (preservative) coarticulation is found when strong rather than weak prosodic boundaries are realized.