Acoustic Correlates of Emphatic Stress in Central Catalan

Abstract

A common feature of public speech in Catalan is the placement of prominence on lexically unstressed syllables (“emphatic stress”). This paper presents an acoustic study of radio speech data. Instances of emphatic stress were perceptually identified. Within-word comparison between vowels with emphatic stress and vowels with primary lexical stress reveals that the former are characterized by having a high tone, higher F0 scaling, and greater intensity, but shorter duration with respect to lexically stressed vowels. Emphatic stress can thus be characterized as anchoring an intonational pitch accent on a lexically unstressed syllable. When this phenomenon occurs, primary lexical stress is still cued by duration. Compared with other lexically unstressed vowels, vowels with emphatic stress have greater duration and intensity, and less vowel centralization. Thus, vowels are hyperarticulated when bearing emphatic stress. In particular, schwa is more open, without merging with /a/. Regarding the distribution of emphatic stresses, the most common pattern observed is binary or rhythmic (le̱s instituci̱ons ‘the institutions’), with emphatic stress occurring two syllables before the primary stress. Less frequently, emphatic stress appears on the first syllable of the prosodic word (na̱cionalitats ‘nationalities’), occasionally producing stress clash (e̱l marc ‘the framework’).

Stressed postverbal pronominals in Catalan

“…Nevertheless, we also find prominence on the verb in condition 1. At this point, we do not have a good explanation of what is causing this pattern, but we note that an extra prominence on a pretonic syllable is not uncommon in narrowly focused constituents, which in turn seems to be related to the phenomenon of rhetoric or emphatic stress (Nadeu and Hualde 2012;Hualde and Nadeu 2014). Further research is needed to understand better the nature of these additional tonal prominences that are not associated with prominent syllables at the word level.…”

“…Note that, for Catalan, Nadeu (2016) observed no localized hyperarticulation due to the presence of prenuclear accent. However, a different type of accent, emphatic stress, did result in an expansion of the vowel space (i. e. more peripheral vowel qualities, Nadeu and Hualde [2012]). This suggests that different levels of prominence are not necessarily cued by the same correlates.…”

“…Overall intensity, and, to a lesser extent, vowel quality and duration have also been identified as correlates of accent (Ortega-Llebaria and Prieto 2010). A study on emphatic stress -i. e. when a pitch accent is exceptionally associated with a lexically unstressed vowel -reveals that despite exhibiting phonological vowel reduction, vowels with emphatic stress are less centralized and longer than their purely unstressed, unaccented counterparts (Nadeu and Hualde 2012). 7 On the other hand, a comparison of stressed vowels in (prenuclear) accented and unaccented contexts shows no difference in either size of the vowel space or vowel duration (Nadeu 2016).…”

“…Importantly, however, there are some contexts (e. g. extrasentential elements like sentential adverbs, dislocations, or appositions) in which stressed syllables are generally unaccented (e. g. Astruc 2003;Astruc-Aguilera and Nolan 2007), and some exceptional cases in which unstressed syllables receive intonational prominence (Nadeu and Hualde 2012). Stress and accent are, thus, not mutually dependent in Catalan.…”

Phonetic and phonological vowel reduction in Central Catalan

“…Despite the strong relationship between stress and vowel quality in Catalan, exceptions to phonological vowel reduction occur in some contexts (Cabré 2002(Cabré , 2010Mascaró 2002;Nadeu & Hualde 2012). The full vowels /e ɛ a ɔ o/, which generally occur in stressed syllables, can appear in unstressed syllables in borrowings (karate [kaˈɾate] 'karate'), clippings (fisioterapeuta > fisio [ˈfizjo] 'physiotherapist'), cultisms and technicisms (fase [ˈfaze] 'phase'), in certain vowel combinations in hiatus (conrear [kunreˈa] 'to cultivate'), and in some compounds.…”