Volume 10, Issue 3-4

A psycho-physical test with 95 observers was used for investigations of tonic accents in East Norwegian spoken language. Fractions of different lengths from the beginning of the stressed syllable of the same verb, but with different accents, were presented to the listeners, who were asked to decide which accent they heard. The accents were correctly identified to a degree of about 90% with very short word fractions, before the end of the stressed syllable. The most important identifying parameters seem to be the fundamental frequency and its variation.