Ellen van Zanten

Speech rate as a secondary prosodic characteristic of polarity questions in three languages

Questions (almost) universally differ from statements in that the former have some element of high pitch that is absent in the latter. Therefore, the difference in speech melody (intonation) is considered to be the primary prosodic correlate of the contrast. We now pursue the possibility that an other, secondary prosodic correlate may exist that signals the difference between statement and question. We noted in Manado Malay (an Austronesian language) that questions were spoken at a faster rate than the corresponding statements. We then examined speech rate in questions and statements in two Germanic languages, viz. Orkney English and Dutch. In all three languages we find faster speaking rate in questions than in statements, but with different distribution of the phenomenon over the sentence. In Manado Malay, the difference seems restricted to the boundaries of prosodic domains, in Orkney it is evenly spread over the sentence, and in Dutch it is only found in the middle portion of the sentence. Some speculation on possible causes of the rate difference between statements and questions is offered in conclusion.

Perception of Indonesian Vowels Spoken in Context

The purpose of the present study is to test the perceptual reality of allophonic variation and harmony in Indonesian. Indonesian listeners with different regional backgrounds were asked to predict word identity (CVCV or CVCVC) based on the presence or absence of vowel allophony and harmony. The data show that listeners were sensitive to the spectrally different allophones, but were not in all cases able to use this information in predicting word identity, probably due to experimental artifact.

10. Word accent systems in the languages of Asia

This chapter surveys accentual systems in the languages of Asia. Our objective has been to provide information on as many languages as we could lay our hands on, given the inevitable limitations on the time for this project and on access to sources in this period. This survey, then, does not claim anything near completeness. In a way, it presents an agenda for further studies especially witnessed by the many sections where little or no information on accentual systems is presented. We are not defending these limitations by claiming that the basic descriptive work has not been done in all these cases, although for many languages this is probably true. We have no doubt, however, that a lot of useful information on word accent has been gathered and is present in the countless language descriptions that we have been unable to consult. There may even be typological surveys that focus on word accent that we have overlooked. With all these limitations and shortcomings, we hope that this chapter still o¤ers a useful inventory which will stimulate further typological and theoretical research. In section 2, we outline the contents of this chapter, motivating its organization and introducing the conventions which guide the presentation of accentual data. Section 3 explains on which materials this survey is based. Sections 4, 5, 6 and 7 present data on word accent systems in

11. Word accent systems in the Middle East

This chapter deals with accentual systems in the languages spoken in the Middle East and includes a discussion of a number of isolate ancient languages and some Afro-Asiatic languages, notably Egyptian and Semitic languages. The notion ‘Middle East’ is not well-defined linguistically, and some languages that could have been included here are dealt with in other chapters. All Altaic languages, Indo-Iranian languages (such as Kurdish and Avestan) are discussed in Schiering and van der Hulst (this volume). All Caucasian languages as well as Indo-European languages such as Hittite (and related Anatolian languages) and Armenian are treated in van der Hulst (this volume). Afro-asiatic languages spoken in North Africa can be found in Downing (this volume). This survey, incomplete as it is, was included because the relevant area was not included in the areas covered in the other chapters of this volume. The organization of each section (or subsection) with accentual data is as follows: a. Genetic structure of the (sub)family; these are based on sources such as Ruhlen (1991), Comrie et al (2003), the Ethnologue (15th edition) and several others of the many sources that o¤er classifications. We have tried to strike a compromise in cases of conflicting groupings and no claim is made here that the resulting groupings are superior to those o¤ered in other sources. In each case (sub)family names are presented in capitals. We have not included information of the numbers of languages per (sub)family and in most cases list only a (sometimes rather arbitrary) subset of the languages in each (sub)family. Languages that are included in StressTyp (see section 3) are indicated in bold. Languages that are not in StressTyp about which this chapter provides information are underlined.

9. Word accent systems in the languages of Europe

This chapter deals with accentual systems in the languages of Europe. This work, however, does not claim completeness. Rather, it presents an agenda for further research especially witnessed by several sections where little or no information on accentual systems is presented. I am not defending these limitations by claiming that the basic descriptive work has not been done in all these cases, although for a number of languages this is most likely true. I have no doubt that a lot of useful information on word accent not reported here has been done and is present in the countless language descriptions that, for various reasons, I have been unable to consult. With these limitations, I hope that this chapter still o¤ers a useful survey which will stimulate further typological and theoretical work. In section 2 I outline the contents of this chapter, motivating its organization. Section 3 explains the materials on which this chapter is based. Sections 4 present the accentual data. Finally, in section 5 I will o¤er some general observations and conclusions.

5. Accent in the native languages of North America

The goal of the volume under review is to present in survey fashion what is known about the accentual properties of the world’s languages. For this purpose the editors have assembled a distinguished list of authors, including themselves, all deeply interested in accentual systems, several having broad areal expertise. The result is an invaluable handbook that phonologists, typologists, and arealists will want to often consult, if not own. The task of conceptualizing, let alone producing such a work is an enormous one, as researchers in this area face several obstacles which are appropriately evoked in various chapters. The first is to establish a reasonable amount of agreement on what kind of properties count as “accentual”. Assuming that this issue has been resolved (it hasn’t), a second obstacle concerns the available literature: Beyond the fact that many languages have not been described at all, descriptions which do exist often provide only scanty coverage of accentual phenomena—or even fail to mention whether a given language has stress-accent or not. Finally, where multiple descriptions exist, one often finds conflicting views on whether a given language has stress-accent or not, and if so, on how the stress system works. Unless otherwise noted, in what follows I will use the words accent and accentual as cover terms for the broad range of phenomena covered in this survey, which mostly concern stress-accent (SA), the more elusive concept of pitch-accent (PA), and occasionally other properties to be discussed below.