Disentangling stress from accent in Spanish
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Marta Ortega-Llebaria
Abstract
According to Sluijter and colleagues (1996b, 1997), stress is independent from accent because it has its own phonetic cues: stressed vowels are longer and have flatter spectral tilts than their unstressed counterparts. However, Campbell and Beckman (1997) show that, for American English, these duration and spectral tilt patterns are a consequence of vowel reduction: when unreduced vowels with different levels of stress (primary and secondary stress) are compared, duration and spectral tilt do not correlate with the stress difference. This paper contributes to the above discussion by examining the stress contrast in deaccented syllables in Spanish. Since Spanish has no phonological vowel reduction, it constitutes a good test case for the above hypotheses. Moreover, this study attempts to disentangle the correlates of stress from those of accent, something which has thus far not been done in the traditional literature on Spanish stress. The results indicate that stress contrast in Spanish is maintained in deaccented contexts by differences in duration, spectral tilt, and to a lesser extent, vowel quality.
Abstract
According to Sluijter and colleagues (1996b, 1997), stress is independent from accent because it has its own phonetic cues: stressed vowels are longer and have flatter spectral tilts than their unstressed counterparts. However, Campbell and Beckman (1997) show that, for American English, these duration and spectral tilt patterns are a consequence of vowel reduction: when unreduced vowels with different levels of stress (primary and secondary stress) are compared, duration and spectral tilt do not correlate with the stress difference. This paper contributes to the above discussion by examining the stress contrast in deaccented syllables in Spanish. Since Spanish has no phonological vowel reduction, it constitutes a good test case for the above hypotheses. Moreover, this study attempts to disentangle the correlates of stress from those of accent, something which has thus far not been done in the traditional literature on Spanish stress. The results indicate that stress contrast in Spanish is maintained in deaccented contexts by differences in duration, spectral tilt, and to a lesser extent, vowel quality.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
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Part 1: Segments and processes
- Detection of liaison consonants in speech processing in French 3
- Patterns of VCV coarticulatory direction according to the DAC model 25
- The stability of phonological features within and across segments 41
- Pre- and postaspirated stops in Andalusian Spanish 67
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Part 2: Prosodic structure
- Variation in the intonation of extra-sentential elements 85
- Voicing-dependent cluster simplification asymmetries in Spanish and French 109
- The phonetics and phonology of intonational phrasing in Romance 131
- Disentangling stress from accent in Spanish 155
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Part 3: Acquisition of segmental contrasts and prosody
- On the effect of (morpho)phonological complexity in the early acquisition of unstressed vowels in European Portuguese 179
- The perception of lexical stress patterns by Spanish and Catalan infants 199
- Logistic regression modelling for first and second language perception data 219
- Rhythmic typology and variation in first and second languages 237
- Subject Index 259
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Part 1: Segments and processes
- Detection of liaison consonants in speech processing in French 3
- Patterns of VCV coarticulatory direction according to the DAC model 25
- The stability of phonological features within and across segments 41
- Pre- and postaspirated stops in Andalusian Spanish 67
-
Part 2: Prosodic structure
- Variation in the intonation of extra-sentential elements 85
- Voicing-dependent cluster simplification asymmetries in Spanish and French 109
- The phonetics and phonology of intonational phrasing in Romance 131
- Disentangling stress from accent in Spanish 155
-
Part 3: Acquisition of segmental contrasts and prosody
- On the effect of (morpho)phonological complexity in the early acquisition of unstressed vowels in European Portuguese 179
- The perception of lexical stress patterns by Spanish and Catalan infants 199
- Logistic regression modelling for first and second language perception data 219
- Rhythmic typology and variation in first and second languages 237
- Subject Index 259
