Experimental evidence for optimal and minimal metrical structure of German word prosody

Structural Factors Affecting the Assignment of Word Stress in German

“…Besides the generative rule-based accounts of stress assignment mentioned above, it is possible to model our findings in a constraintbased account, such as Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky 2004). Such an approach might be able to capture multiple factors affecting word stress assignment (see Alber 1997, Féry 1998, Knaus & Domahs 2009 among others for OT-based analyses of the German stress system). However, within OT it would be difficult to capture the substantial degree of variability both within and across speakers.…”

5 Word prosody in focus and non-focus position: An ERP-study on the interplay of prosodic domains

“…van der Hulst 1996van der Hulst , 1997van der Hulst , 2009Noel Aziz Hanna 2003) or have their own prosodic structure determining primary and secondary stress positions (Liberman and Prince 1977;Nespor and Vogel 1986;Hayes 1995;Alber 2005;Knaus and Domahs 2009), we come to the following conclusion.…”

“…There is some evidence that heavy (i.e. closed) final syllables Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 5/31/15 7:13 PM build monosyllabic feet (Janß en 2003;Alber 2005;Domahs et al 2008;Janßen and Domahs 2008;Knaus and Domahs 2009), and that the rightmost foot within a word receives main stress (Alber 20 05;Féry 1998;Giegerich 1985;Knaus and Domahs 2009;Wiese 2000). With respect to secondary stress in German words, it has been proposed that syllables of words are fully parsed into feet and that the positions of main and secondary stress depend on this foot structure (Alber 200 5;Knaus and Domahs 2009).…”

“…closed) final syllables Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 5/31/15 7:13 PM build monosyllabic feet (Janß en 2003;Alber 2005;Domahs et al 2008;Janßen and Domahs 2008;Knaus and Domahs 2009), and that the rightmost foot within a word receives main stress (Alber 20 05;Féry 1998;Giegerich 1985;Knaus and Domahs 2009;Wiese 2000). With respect to secondary stress in German words, it has been proposed that syllables of words are fully parsed into feet and that the positions of main and secondary stress depend on this foot structure (Alber 200 5;Knaus and Domahs 2009). However, alternative approaches assume that secondary stress rather depends on the rhythmical distribution of strong syllables within a two-step system involving main stress assignment followed by rhythmically-based assignment of secondary stresses (see the Primary-Accent-First Theory, van der Hu lst 1996van der Hu lst , 1997van der Hu lst , 2009 or on rhythmical properties of higher-level prosody (see Noel Aziz Hanna 2003).…”

The role of predictability and structure in word stress processing: an ERP study on Cairene Arabic and a cross-linguistic comparison

“…In words with a heavy final syllable (Vitamin—((vi.ta) F (mi:n) F ) ω ), the final syllable constitutes a non-branching foot (a moraic trochee), and in words with a light final syllable, the final syllable constitutes the weak syllable of a bisyllabic trochee. Thus, trisyllabic words varying in the structure of the final syllable consist of either two feet ((σσ) F (σ) F ) ω or one foot (σ(σσ) F ) ω (for such an analysis see Janssen, 2003 ; Domahs et al, 2008 , 2014 ; Knaus and Domahs, 2009 ; Röttger et al, 2012 ).…”