Some acoustic and articulatory correlates of phrasal stress in Spanish
Files
Accepted manuscript
Date
2016
Authors
Erickson, Donna
Villegas, Julián
Wilson, Ian
Iguro, Yuki
Moore, Jeff
Erker, Daniel
Version
OA Version
Citation
D Erickson, J Villegas, I Wilson, Y Iguro, J Moore, D Erker. 2016. "Some acoustic and articulatory correlates of phrasal stress in Spanish." Language, Volume 8, Issue 9
Abstract
All spoken languages show rhythmic patterns. Recent work
with a number of different languages (English, Japanese,
Mandarin Chinese, and French) suggests that metrically
(hierarchically) assigned stress levels of the utterance show
strong correlations with the amount of jaw displacement, and
corresponding F1 values. This paper examines some
articulatory and acoustic correlates of Spanish rhythm;
specifically, we ask if there is a correlation between phrasal
stress values metrically assigned to each syllable and
acoustic/articulatory values. We used video recordings of
three Salvadoran Spanish speakers to measure maximum jaw displacement, mean F0, mean intensity, mean duration, and
mid-vowel F1 for each vowel in two Spanish sentences. The results show strong correlations between stress and duration,
and between stress and F1, but weak correlations between stress and both mean vowel intensity and maximum jaw displacement. We also found weak correlations between jaw displacement and both mean vowel intensity and F1.