Stress Patterns

How to handle speech

Thorsten Trippel

Universität Bielefeld

Material provided by a pool of colleagues: Dafydd Gibbon, Vivian Gramley, Alexandra Thies

Overview

• RP and GenAm phonemes
• Phonotactics revisited
• What is stress?
• What is rhythm?
• Typologic differences by rhythmic patterns
• Summary

RP and GenAm

• Lexical differences: other words
• Orthographical differences: in speech?
• BUT: other phoneme inventory
  • Vowels
  • Consonants
  • Combinations of sounds: other phonotactic system

Rep: definition of vowels and consonants

Phonetics

Vowels

A sound produced with open configuration of the articulators, vibration produced by vocal folds;

In spectrogram: lower frequency present (voicing), regular shape of formants, comparatively few higher frequencies

Consonants

Obstructed airflow, with some sort of friction or blockage;

In spectrogram: unvoiced sounds = not many lower frequencies, fricatives: a lot of energy in higher frequencies, very irregular; plosives: sudden release of energy in many frequencies

Rep: definition of vowels and consonants

Phonology

Vowels

Core element of a syllable called nucleus; a sound from the list of vowels

Consonants

Every other speech sound; a sound from the list of consonants

Compare: Vowels: short vowels

Compare: Vowels: long vowels

Compare: Vowels: diphthongs

Compare: Vowels: triphthongs

Compare: Consonants

• No difference
• Plosives: /p, t, k, b, d, g/
• Fricatives: /f, v, s, z , ð, θ, ʃ, ʒ, h /
• Nasals: /m, n, ŋ/
• Affricates: /tʃ, dʒ/
• Liquits: /r, l/
• Sonorants/glides: /w, j/

Phonotactics revisited

• bɪt
• pɪt
• tɪt
• dɪt (-)
• kɪt
• gɪt
• fɪt
• vɪt(-)
• ʃɪt
• sɪt
• hɪt
• rɪt(-)
• ʤɪt(-)
• nɪt
• mɪt(-)
• lɪt
• wɪt

Developing a phonotactic network

Developing a phonotactic network

Developing a phonotactic network

Developing a phonotactic network

Developing a phonotactic network

Developing a phonotactic network

Developing a phonotactic network

English syllables

Stress

Purpose of stress

• Prominence
• Better to hear
• Structure an utterance
• Hence: relational feature to other syllables

How to stress

• Length
• Loudness
• Pitch

Ranks of stress

• Long words: more than one stress?
• Primary stress: often transcribed with a '
• Secondary stress: often transcribed with a ,

Stress variants

• Fixed stress:
  • First syllable
  • Last syllable
  • Penultimate syllable
• Variable stress
  • No easy general stress rule
  • Lexical stress

Heavy or light?

• Heavy syllables: long vowel, diphthong
  • beat
  • table
  • microphone
• Light syllables: short vowel, reduced vowel
  • put
  • monitor
  • computer
• Often: heavy syllables stressed

Stress and morphology

• Affixes usually unstressed!
• BUT: some suffixes stress neutral: -ed; -ly; -ing: eg. like/liked, shine/shining, warm/warmly
• OTHER: stress imposing: -al; -ic; -ical; -ity: eg. universe/universal; scene/scenic; politic/political; sparse/sparsity; complex/complexity

Stress = Minimal Pair?

• Contrastive stress
• Different stress = different word
• Example: import/import
• Beton/beton

Eleanor Rigby vs. Mick Jagger: Rhythm

• "Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name" (Beatles)
• "We don't need no satisfaction" (Rolling Stones)
• How does text relate to music?

Rhythm

• Criteria for rhythm
  • Isochrony
  • Periodicity
  • Stress
• Foot: stressed (strong) syllable with all adjacent weak syllables
• See also metric in poems

Rhythmic types of languages

• Stress timed languages (Fußzählende Sprachen)
  • Every foot has the same length
  • Number of syllables not important
  • Time(stressed, unstressed, unstressed) = time(stressed)
  • Example: English, Brazilian Portuguese(?)
• Syllable timed languages (silbenzählende Sprachen)
  • Every syllable has the same length
  • Length of utterance corresponds to number of syllables
  • Time(stressed, unstressed, unstressed) = 3* time(stressed)
  • Example: French, European Portuguese
• Mora timed languages: the odd one out - Japanese

Problem with stress and rhythm

• Grammatical words: usually not stressed + reduced vowels
• BUT: sometimes stressed
• Example: but; the car but the car

Summary

• Stress:
  • Produced by different features
  • Strong/weak syllables
  • Related to rhythm
• Rhythm:
  • Isochrony
  • Periodicity
  • Stress
• Stress timed vs. syllable timed languages
  • Typological distinction
  • Hard to measure