On durational correlates of word stress in Finnish

Abstract It has been shown that the phonetic alignment of (sentence) accentuation in Finnish follows a moraic pattern: an f0 rise during a word's first mora, a fall during the second one. This paper shows that the alignment of Finnish (word) stress, which is fixed and associated with the initial syllable, is similarly realized over two morae. It is shown that segments and syllables have a reliably longer duration when they occur within the domain of the word's first two morae than when they occur outside this domain. The most conspicuous concomitant of primary stress is the durational variation of the second-syllable single vowel: if this vowel constitutes the word's second mora, its duration is very much longer than otherwise. Secondary stress is shown to involve a similar although attenuated durational variation in the second-syllable vowel of the word's second foot. It is further shown that when a consonant constitutes the word's second mora, the consonant is lengthened, but only if it is voiced. It is argued that the motivation for the second-mora lengthening (applying as it does to vowels and voiced consonants) is to provide room for the phonetic realization of accentuation.