Table Of ContentSTUDIES IN STRESS AND AC C E N T
EDITED By LARRY M. HYMAN
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA OCCASIONAL PAPERS IN LINGUISTICS NO. 4
APRIL 1977
PUBLISHED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
UNIVERSITY Oi SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface v
Part 1. General and Ex erimental.
Alan Bell, ACCENT PLACEMENT AND PERCEPTION OF PROMINENCE
RHYTHMIC STRUCTURES 1
Victoria A. Fromkin, PUTTING THE EMPHASIS ON THE WRONG
SYLLABLE zs
Eva Ga°rdtny, THE IMPORTANCE OF TURNING POINTS FOR THE PITCH
PATTERNS OF SWEDISH ACCENTS z7
Larry M. Hyman, ON THE NATURE OF LINGUISTIC STRESS 37
Waune A. Lea, ACOUSTIC CORRELATES OF STRESS AND JUNCTURE 83
Larry Nessiy, ON THE VALUE OF PHONOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS IN
THE STUDY OF ENGLISH STRESS 221
John J. Ohala, THE PHYSIOLOGY OF STRESS 145
Part 11. Language Studies.
Wallace L. Chafe, ACCENT AND RELATED PHENOMENA IN THE FIVE
NATIONS IROQUOIS LANGUAGES 169
Alice Wyland Grundt, SYNTACTIC ACCENT IN NORWEGIAN
MORPHOLOGY 283
Mary R. Haas, TONAL ACCENT IN CREEK 195
Paul Kiparsky and Morris Halle, TOWARDS A RECONSTRUCTION OF
THE INDO-EUROPEAN ACCENT 209
Margaret Langdon, STRESS, LENGTH, AND PITCH IN YUMAN
LANGUAGES 239
iv
James D, McCawZey, ACCENT IN JAPANESE 261
Pamela Munro, TOWARDS A RECONSTRUCTION OF UTO-AZTECAN
STRESS 303
Man,jari Ohala, STRESS IN HINDI 327
V
PREFACE
The papers included in the volume were presented at a STRESSFEST,
or Symposium on Stress and Accent, held at the university of Southern
California on February 28-29, 1976. Together, they represent a broad
spectrum of the approaches taken to the study of accentual phenomena
and cover many of the important language areas of the world. The 15
studies are grouped into two sections: general and experimental
(section 1) and language studies (section 2).
In the first section, the authors are concerned with the pro-
duction, perception, and/or psychological implications of linguistic
analyses of stress/accent. Bell's paper reports on experiments at-
tempting to seek a correlation between one's accentual, system (in
particular, stress-placement) and the way sequences of like pitch-
signals are perceived. Fromkin's paper discusses the nature of
speech errors made in the realization of stress and relates these
to the phonological analysis of English stress. ;ording's reaper
demonstrates the importance of the timing of pitch changes in the
realization of the two accents in Swedish. Hyman's paper investi-
gates universals of stress-accent on the basis of a survey of more
than 400 languages. Lea's paper treats the acoustics and perception
of stress in English, especially with respect to the detection of
syntactic boundaries. Nessly's paper tells of results of experiments
where speakers assigned stress to nonsense words, and finally, J.
Ohala's paper provides a thorough study of the physiological mech-
anisms underlying the production of stress.
In the second section, the authors are concerned rcith deennic-
tive and/or theoretical aspects of accent in individual Zanpuay s
or language families. Chafe's paper surveys stress in the Five
Nations Iroquois languages, while Grundt looks at the morphological
side of accent in Norwegian. Particularly intriguing ie the tonal
accent system of Creek discussed in the paper by Haas, as veil as
the history of the Indo-European accent discussed in the paper by
Elparsky and HaZie. In the paper by Langdon, stress (and some
tone) is surveyed in the lunar languages, and in M Cawley'e paper
general statements are made concerning the pitch-accent cystoma of
the various dialects of Japanese. In Munro'e paper stress is re-
constructed for Prota-Astecan with supporting en dencr> drawn from
throughout that family. Finally, M. Ohala approaches the diffirau7.t
and controversial subject of whether Hindi has, or does not have,
stress.
As can be seen from the, table of contents, this volume is both
heavily experimental and heavily Amerindian. ShiZe most of the
contributions deal exclusively with stress-accent, tonal or pitch-
accent is covered in Scandinavian, Japanese, and some Amerindian.
vi
In addition to the above, four other papers ;ere presented at the
symposium: "AZternatina stresses: variations on a theme" by
Jonathan Kaye, "The realization of accent in some nonstariard dia-
lects of Serbo-Croatian" by IZse Lehiste, "The nature and deriva-
tion of stress patterns in English" by Mark Liberman, and "Eskimo
stress and consonant gradation" by Roy Wright.
The Symposium on Stress and Accent was partially supported by
Humanities Division Development Funds at the University of Southern
California, made available by Dean David H. Malone. The publica-
tion of these proceedings has been made possible by additional sup-
port from a National Science Foundation Grant No. SOC 75-i6iS7,
under which sponsorship this symposium was conceived. Finalie,, ray
personal thanks to all of those persons who made this symposiums
and this volume possible, especially (for hospitality shown to
out-of-town guests) Vicki Fromkin, Peter Ladefoged, Steve Anderson,
Jean-Marie Hombert, Pam Munro, Russ Schuh, Matt Shibatani, Tina
Bennett, and Harriet Jisa (the last of whom typed this volume).
L.M.H.
1
ACCENT PLACEMENT AND PERCEPTION OF PROMINENCE
IN RHYTHMIC STRUCTURES *
Alan Bell
University of Colorado
The concern of this paper is the relation of the perception of auditory temporal
patterns (henceforth rhythmic perception) to accentual systems of language. I It deals
mainly with one relatively straightforward aspect of the topic, the position of prominent
(accented) elements and the sensory dimension on which they are marked. it Is intended
to mesh with the general enterprise of discovering what accentual systems are like,
and how they came to be that way. For the proper direction of that enterprise it
is well to look forward to the forces that may provide a deeper explanation of the
regularities to be uncovered.
The existence of a relation between rhythmic perception and linguistic accent
is most plausible under the assumption that the raison d'etre of accent is at least
partially functional. One conjecture, implicit in Trubetzkoy's characterization of
stress -,is a culminative element of language, is that it provides an organizational
z tmowork k for speech, which facilitates its use in some way.
This framework is a rhythmic structure, in the sense of a quasi-regular temporal
succession of patterns. In the simplest cases, the pattern is based upon the contrast
between a prominent (accented) syllable and nonpraminent ones, and is composed of
a succession of domains (usually words or phrases) in which the prominent element
occurs once in a fixed position. The temporal pattern of one such accental system
might be * - - * ------ - - - - where the number of nonproznlnent elements
varies according to the length of the word.
Rhythmic 2erception. Psychological research on rhythmic perception parallels the
linguistic work on stress and accent summarized by Hyman In this volume. One line
of research emphasizes the role that the physical characteristics of the sounds of an
auditory pattern play in its perception. This corresponds to research on the physical
correlates of accent. Another focuses upon the organizational principles that people
use iii the perception of rhythmic patterns. This corresponds to the functional and
structural studies of stress and accent.
A fundamental result concerning the physical qualities of succession of sounds
is that their rate of succession must fall within a limited range for them to be
2
perceived in terms of a rhythmic pattern. Although there is substantial variation from
one person to another, if the rate is much greater than 5 repetitions per second, the
sounds tend to be heard as a continuous stream. As the rate falls below one repetition
every two seconds, the sounds tend to be perceived individually (Woodrow 1951, Fraisse
1956). This range of course includes the ordinary repetition rates of rhythmic elements
in speech, with syllable rate of conversational speech, about 5 syllables per second,
at the high end.
Within this range, even a perfectly regular succession of identical sounds will
often be perceived as composed of repeating groups of sounds. The length of the
group is influenced by the rate of repetition, longer groups being heard at higher rates.
This is the phenomenon called subjective rhythm (Woodrow 1951, Fraisse 1956).
The rhythmic structure that is perceived, 1. e. the number of sounds in the
repeated groups and its Internal structure (where the "accents" fall), is otherwise
Influenced by the physical parameters of the sound sequence.
A rhythmic group of identical sounds may become salient by virtue of a separa-
tion between the end of one group and the beginning of the next that is greater than
the separation between the members of the group.
Alternatively, rhythmic structures may be marked by repeating combinations
of different sounds. The simplest cases consist of two different sounds, e. g. one
loud and one soft. Thus a regular alternation of soft (S) and loud (L) sounds will be
perceived as a succession of groups of two; a sequence such as ... LSLSSLSLSSLSLSS...
will be perceived as a succession of groups of five; etc.
It may have already struck the reader that sequences such as these are ambiguous.
That is, the first can be interpreted equally well as a succession of LS groups as of
SL groups. And there are five possible rhythmic groups for the second; LSLSS,
SLSSL, LSSLS, SSLSL, and SLSLS, Psychologists have exploited a number of responses--
impressionistic reports by the listener of what he hears, forced choice among pattern
representations, and reproduction of patterns by tapping or otherwise--to infer which
of the possible groups a listener hears when presented with sequences of this kind.
One might expect that listeners would be more or less equally divided among the
possible rhythmic groups. This is not the case, in fact. There is almost always a
decided preference for certain groupings.
Influence of sensory dimension of prominence. The sensory dimension along which
ceived. Woodrow (1909) the sounds differ influences and which pattern will be per.
Fraisse (1956) report that there is a strong preference for groups beginning with
the louder sound. For example, a sequence ... SLSSLSSLSSLS... Will tend to be heard
as a succession of groups beginning with the loud sound--... -LSS-LSS-LSS-... even
3
though all the sounds occur at equal intervals. The effect increases with increased
difference in loudness between the loud and soft sounds according to an S-shaped
curve. At repetition rates less than 3. 5 per second the effect diminishes.
The tendency to perceive rhythmic structures with initial accent is found
also for subjective rhythm.
On the other hand, if the sounds differ only in length, a different pattern of
responses occurs. If the longer element is less than I. 5 to 2.0 times the shorter
one, a tendency toward grouping with an initially prominent element is again found.
For ratios above that, a tendency to perceive rhythmic groups with a long final element
becomes evident.
The perception of rhythmic sequences whose sounds differ in frequency is more
complex. Woodrow (1911) found that a higher pitch could either begin or end groups
of two or three. In three similar experiments concerning the perception of 8- and
9-element groups, Royer and Garner (1966, 1970) and Handel (1974) different
results were obtained. No tendency for either higher or lower pitched sounds to begin
the perceived rhythmic groups was found in the first of these experiments, but two-
thirds began with the higher pitched sound in the second, and about the same proportion
began with the lower pitched sound in the third. Ilandel points out that sounds of
different pitch are not quantitatively different in the manner of sounds of different
loudness or duration, but rather have a more nearly qualitative difference. (Tb.is
calls to mind the all-or-none effect of pitch difference in the experiments of Fry 1968
and others on the correlates of stress.) lie conjectures that pitch itself may not
determine element preference as much as secondary differences In timbre, etc.
Structure influences. The structure of the rhythmic group itself plays as large a role
in perception as the sensory dimensions of prominence. Out of the four rhythmic groups
possible for a sequence ... SLSSSLSSSLSS..., LSSS and SSSL are preferred to the
two groups with the loud sound in the interior of the group. If there are two loud
sounds in the sequence, LLSS and SSLL are preferred to groups LSSL and SLLS (Fraisse
1956).
From the research by Royer and Garner (1966, 1970) and Handel (1974)
who considered the perception of sequences made up of recurring groups of eight
sounds, we know that these preferences extend to more complex sound combinations.
They offer the explanation that the elements of temporal sequences are perceived
either as figure elements or as ground elements. The sequences may be organized
according to two principles. The gam principle states that a long string of ground
elements ends a pattern; for simple patterns with one accent this corresponds to
initial placement of accent, e. g. LSSS. The run principle states that a long string
of figure elements begins apattern. For the same example, this corresponds to final
4
accent placement, SSL, where now the soft sounds are figure elements. Note that for the
sequences of Fraisse mentioned above, neither SLSS, SSLS nor LSSL, SLLS fit either
principle.
Some kinds of sequences are harder to perceive and learn (i. e. , reproduce or
remember) than others. Sequences of the type ... SLSSSSSLSS... or ... SLLSSSSLLSSS.. .
containing unbroken strings of the two kinds of elements are easier than ones like
... SLLSLSSLLSLSSLLSLS... Internal repetition of subgroups like SL appears to
facilitate perception and production.
Summary. Perception of auditory temporal patterns possesses general characteristics
which are consonant with the conjecture that the same mechanisms play a role in linguistic
accentual systems.
1. Rhythmic perception occurs at rates comparable to the relevant repetition
rates in language.
2. Where several organizations of a sequence are possible, perceived rhythmic
groups tend to be based upon either initial or final position.
3. Sequences with essentially a culminative structure (one or few prominent
elements or shifts from one element to another) are easier to perceive and
learn.
The following characteristics of temporal perception pertain to the placement of accent
and its sensory dimensions.
z. MbRU=io,Ooups with an initial prominent element are preferred even, if the
physical stimulus is a regular succession of identical elements.
z. This tendency is increased if one of a group of elements is louder.
3. Next in preference are rhythmic groups with a final prominence; groups with
medial prominence are relatively disfavored.
4. if the prominent element is marked by greater length, there appears a tendency
for the longer element to end the perceived rhythmic group, as the ratio of
short to long surpasses 1. 5.
5. An element of a rhythmic group can be accented by receiving either higher or
lower pitch than the other elements, in contrast to loudness. To the extent that
Handel'e results can be extended to rhythmic groups with a single prominence,
there should be a tendency for such groups to be perceived with the different
element (whether higher pitched or lower pitched) in Initial position. 2
Do accentual systems affect rhythmic perception? If accentual systems and rhythmic
perception are significantly related, the relation could be from either one to the other,
or both. The prior question is the effect of the accentual system of a person's language
upon his perception of rhythmic structures In general. For If there is an effect,
5
explanations of accentual phenomena in terms of general rhythmic performance are
jeopardized by circularity.
Jakobson, Fant, and Halle (1952) did indeed claim that there exists such an effect:
Interference by the language pattern affects even our responses to non-
speech sounds. Knocks produced at even intervals, with every third
louder, are perceived as groups of three separated by a pause. The
pause is usually claimed by a Czech to fall before the louder knock,
by a Frenchman to fall after the louder; while a Pole hears the pause
one knock after the louder. The different perceptions correspond
exactly to the position of the word stress in the languages involved:
in Czech the stress is on the initial syllable, in French, on the
final, and in Polish, on the penult. When the knocks are produced
with equal loundess but with a longer interval after every third, the
Czech attributes greater loudness to the first knock, the Pole, to
the second, and the Frenchman, to the third.
Experiment on perception of accent placement
An experiment was designed to investigate perception of simple auditory patterns
of tone sequences. The sequences consisted of tones at equal intervals, in which every third
tone differed in either frequency, intensity, or duration. Subjects were drawn from
languages of different accentual patterns: non-fixed (English), and fixed (Bengali, with
initial phrasal accent; Polish, with penultimate word accent; French and Persian, with
final phrasal and word accent respectively). 3
1. Tone Sequences. Four different sequences of tones were used. In all cases,
the interval from tone onset to tone onset was 261 cosec., or a repetition rate of 3. S
per second.
2. Control sequence. One sequence consisted of almost identical pulses of a
500 Hz tone, with an average length of 109 msec. , separated by intervals of 152 inset. 4
3. Frequency sequence. In the frequency sequence every third tone was 540 Hz,
the sequence otherwise being the same as the control sequence.
4. Intensity sequence. Every third tone was louder than the others by an amount
between 2 and 3 dB, the sequence otherwise being the same as the control sequence.
5. Length sequence. Every third tone was 1. 4 times the length of the others, with
period between onset of the tones held constant.
