The Acoustic Realization of Prosodic Prominence in Polish: Word-level Stress and Phrase-level Accent

Abstract

The current study addresses the question of how word-level ("stress") and phrase-or sentence-level prominence ("accent") is realized in Polish. For this purpose, a production experiment eliciting semi-spontaneous utterances was conducted, closely following the methodological approach introduced in [1]. Our acoustic analyses are based on identical target syllables which are embedded in sentences under conditions that allow to disentangle word-level and phrase-level prominence. The acoustic realizations of these target syllables are then subject to linear mixed-effect models fitted for various acoustic parameters: duration, fundamental frequency maximum, intensity, and spectral balance. The models indicate that prominence marking in Polish is realized acoustically in a stable fashion on phrase-level only. Word stress marking occurs only in cases where a lexically stressed syllable simultaneously realizes a phrase-level accent.

Fluency-related Temporal Features and Syllable Prominence as Prosodic Proficiency Predictors for Learners of English with Different Language Backgrounds

“…The implications based on syllable prominence estimates should thus be treated with caution, and further investigation on the matter is recommended. The low effect sizes could indicate variation in the acoustic prominence realizations within this group, or they may stem from weak manifestation of Polish word and sentence stress ( Cwiek & Wagner, 2018 ; Dogil & Williams, 1999 ).…”

“…This might be due to the fact that, in contrast to English, the fixed word stress is not important for lexical contrast in Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, or Polish. Acoustic marking of word stress is found to be absent in Czech ( Skarnitzl & Eriksson, 2017 ), realization of prominence in Hungarian has been deemed to be relatively weak ( Vogel et al, 2015 ), and Mocova (2012) claims that “Slovak stress is one of the weakest among European languages.” Word stress in Polish, in turn, has been characterized as “at best weakly realized” ( Dogil & Williams, 1999 ) and acoustic marking of prominence has been found at the phrase-level only ( Cwiek & Wagner, 2018 ).…”

“…In a study by Szalontai et al (2016) about Hungarian word and sentence stress, syllable duration was significantly affected by both word-level and phrasal stress patterns, but F0 and intensity contributed only to phrasal stress. Cwiek and Wagner (2018) studied Polish word and sentence stress and found duration as the most significant marker of prominence when word and sentence stress were realized in the same syllable. For sentence stress alone, however, F0, intensity, and spectral balance were more salient markers than duration.…”