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The nature and use of Icelandic prenuclear and nuclear pitch accents: Evidence from F0 alignment and syllable/segment duration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2010

Nicole Dehé
Nicole Dehé*
Affiliation:
Institut für Englische Philologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany. ndehe@zedat.fu-berlin.de
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Abstract

Two production studies and one perception study were designed to systematically test F0 alignment and segment duration in Icelandic pitch accents with a view to investigating previous claims about the inventory of distinct intonational categories. Four different conditions were tested: (i) prenuclear pitch accents, (ii) nuclear accents in sentence-final position in sentences with either broad focus or (iii) with final narrow focus, and (iv) nuclear narrow focus accents in non-final position. The alignment results are such that (i) prenuclear accents are signalled by a late rise (L*H), while final nuclear accents are signalled by an early rise; (ii) F0 peaks in prefinal nuclear accents are aligned earlier than in prenuclear accents, but later than in final nuclear accents, suggesting a prosodic boundary effect. The duration measurements suggest a positional, but no focus, effect on the duration of the accented syllable and its vowel, such that syllables/vowels earlier in the sentence are longer than later ones.

Keywords

F0 alignmentfocusIcelandicintonationnuclear accentprenuclear accent
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , May 2010 , pp. 31 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2010

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