The Realisation of Prominence in Three Varieties of Standard Spoken Finnish

The central goal of this study was to study how contrastive accent is realised phonetically in three regional varieties of Standard Spoken Finnish. Speakers from the Oulu, Turku and Tampere regions produced unaccented and contrastively accented versions of the target words. Fundamental frequencies and segment durations were measured in all the target words, and in the contrastively accented versions also the temporal distance of the F0 peak from word onset. In the unaccented words, F0 fluctuations were very small, indicating once more that in Finnish, too, mere word stress is not realised tonally. In the words with CV.CV(X) structure, the lengthening of segment durations due to stress was restricted to the initial syllable in Tampere, whereas in Oulu and Turku the lengthening extended to the second syllable. The width of the fallrise F0 pattern realising contrastive accent was in all word structures widest in the Oulu variety, and the narrowest in the Tampere variety. In the Turku variety CV.CV(X) words, the F0 peak occurred further away from word onset than in any other words investigated. The differences in segment durations among the varieties were similar in the unaccented words and in the contrastively accented ones, with one exception: the duration of V1 in the unaccented CV.CV(X) words was the same across the varieties, but in the contrastively accented CV.CV(X) words the duration of V1 was shorter in the Turku variety than in the other varieties. The durational ratio of V1 and V2 in the Turku variety – as in the Oulu variety – was different from the durational ratio in the Tampere variety: in Turku and Oulu V2 had a longer duration than V1, whereas in Tampere V1 had a longer duration than V2. This confirms earlier observations that Turku and Oulu belong to regions in which the V2 of CV.CV(X) words is half-long (longer than V1), but Tampere does not. However, the present study shows that the relative half-long duration of the V2 of CV.CV(X) words is achieved differently in Turku and Oulu: in Turku through the short duration of V1, but in Oulu through the long duration of V2.

[1]  Martti Vainio,et al.  Quantity and tone in Finnish lexically stressed syllables , 2006 .

[2]  V. Huss.  English Word Stress in the Post-Nuclear Position , 1978, Phonetica.

[3]  M. Beckman.  Stress And Non-Stress Accent , 1986 .

[4]  Michael O´Dell,et al.  Intrinsic Timing and Quantity in Finnish , 2003 .

[5]  D. Robert Ladd,et al.  On the phonetics and phonology of "segmental anchoring" of F0: evidence from German , 2004, J. Phonetics.

[6]  Riitta Välimaa-Blum.  A Pitch Accent Analysis of Intonation in Finnish , 1988 .

[7]  Kari Suomi,et al.  Durational and tonal correlates of accent in Finnish , 2003, J. Phonetics.

[8]  Francis Nolan,et al.  Pitch accent realization in four varieties of British English , 2000, J. Phonetics.

[9]  Mark F Medress,et al.  Acoustic Correlates of Word Stress , 1972 .

[10]  D. J. Hermes,et al.  The frequency scale of speech intonation. , 1991, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[11]  Julia Hirschberg,et al.  Tonal alignment patterns in Spanish , 1995 .

[12]  Martti Vainio,et al.  Tonal features, intensity, and word order in the perception of prominence , 2006, J. Phonetics.

[13]  Fred Karlsson.  Suomen yleiskielen segmentaalifoneemien paradigma , 1969 .

[14]  J. Pierrehumbert.  The phonology and phonetics of English intonation , 1987 .

[15]  Laurence White,et al.  English speech timing : a domain and locus approach , 2002 .

[16]  J Caspers,et al.  Effects of Time Pressure on the Phonetic Realization of the Dutch Accent-Lending Pitch Rise and Fall , 1993, Phonetica.

[17]  Nina Thorsen,et al.  F₀ Timing in Danish Word Perception , 1984 .

[18]  D. Ladd,et al.  Constant "segmental anchoring" of F0 movements under changes in speech rate. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[19]  Agaath M. C. Sluijter,et al.  Spectral balance as an acoustic correlate of linguistic stress. , 1996, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[20]  Yi Xu,et al.  Speech melody as articulatorily implemented communicative functions , 2005, Speech Commun..

[21]  Bertil Lyberg,et al.  Final lengthening-partly a consequence of restrictions on the speed of fundamental frequency change , 1979 .

[22]  D. Robert Ladd,et al.  Tonal Alignment and the Representation of Accentual Targets , 1995 .

[23]  Raija Taramaa.  Stubborn and Silent Finns With 'Sisu' in Finnish-American Literature : an Imagological Study of Finnishness in the Literary Production of Finnish-American Authors , 2007 .

[24]  D. Ladd,et al.  Stability of tonal alignment: the case of Greek prenuclear accents , 1998 .

[25]  Mattias Heldner,et al.  Temporal effects of focus in Swedish , 2001, J. Phonetics.

[26]  D. Hirst.  Intonation in British English , 1998 .

[27]  Kim E. A. Silverman,et al.  The timing of prenuclear high accents in English , 1987 .

[28]  D. Klatt.  The duration of (s) in English words. , 1974, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[29]  Raimo Niemelä.  Ikääntyneiden informaatiokäyttäytyminen : laadullinen tutkimus arkielämän informaatiokäytännöistä ja toimintaan aktivoitumisesta , 2006 .

[30]  Riikka Ylitalo,et al.  Toisen tavun vokaalin puolipidennyksestä oulunseutulaisten puheessa , 2004 .

[31]  Alice Turk,et al.  The domain of accentual lengthening in American English , 1997 .

[32]  Beckman,et al.  Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form: Articulatory evidence for differentiating stress categories , 1994 .

[33]  Martti Vainio,et al.  Perception of vowel length: Tonality cues categorization even in a quantity language , 2007 .

[34]  Klaus R. Scherer,et al.  Vocal communication of emotion , 2000 .

[35]  Mikko Kuronen.  Vokaluttalets akustik i sverigesvenska, finlandssvenska och finska , 2000 .

[36]  Kari Suomi,et al.  On durational correlates of word stress in Finnish , 2004, J. Phonetics.

[37]  M. Rauniomaa.  Recovery through repetition : returning to prior talk and taking a stance in American-English and Finnish conversations , 2008 .

[38]  I. Lehiste.  The Timing of Utterances and Linguistic Boundaries , 1972 .

[39]  Kari Suomi.  Temporal conspiracies for a tonal end: Segmental durations and accentual f0 movement in a quantity language , 2005, J. Phonetics.

[40]  Laurence White,et al.  Structural influences on accentual lengthening in English , 1999 .

[41]  Antti Iivonen.  Äännekeston riippuvuus sanan pituudesta irrallaan äännetyissä sanoissa , 1974 .

[42]  V. Bērziņš.  Sārnate: living by a coastal lake during the East Baltic Neolithic , 2008 .