Volume 44, Issue 1

Under the so-called culminative definition of stress, present-day linguists hold the view that within one word or larger domain only one syllable can bear the stress. This is in contrast with the classical (British-English) phonetic tradition which allows the occurrence of two strong stresses within certain words, which are then called ‘double-stressed’. Moreover, precisely the class of double-stressed words was said to be subject to rhythmic variation (or ‘stress clash’). The present paper purports to find acoustic and perceptual evi’dence that may allow us to choose between these competing proposals, comparing the behaviour of Dutch adjectives with canonically rising, falling, and double-stress patterns, in spoken contexts that should bear out the predicted rhythmic changes in double-stressed words. Our results argue against a strictly culminative definition of stress.

This paper is a study of how speech act (statement, question, focus) influences some tonal patterns in Standard Chinese. The material presents four tonal patterns in five speech acts produced three times each by 4 speakers. To limit the size of comparisons, one of the speakers is analyzed first, the others are then compared with him. The analysis of constant and varying features in the interaction of speech act and tonal pattern uses a model of intonation described elsewhere. The results indicate that Chinese prosody shares with other languages a number of general features which were taken as a basis for the model.

Sequences of stops are often characterized by a dual closure. According to some authors C1 is released. Our articulatory data (electropalatography) confirm their acoustical findings. In the case of a front-to-back coarticulation, the release of C1 in French is similar to the production of a click.

A series of acoustic measures based on the long-term average spectrum were developed to discriminate five voice qualities. These were breathy voice, creaky voice, nasal voice, tense voice and whispery voice. A preliminary study first tested the effectiveness of a series of ‘equal-Hertz’ intervals in terms of their ability to discriminate the five voice types. The best of these was then compared to Bark and Mel intervals, using discriminant analysis. The most effective discriminators were shown to be the 1.5-Bark and 200-Mel intervals. The significant discriminators in all the discriminant analyses were then used to predict expert perceptual ratings of the voice qualities. All measures developed successfully predicted to all the voice types except nasal voice.