Acoustic correlates and perceptual cues of word and sentence stress: A cross-linguistic (re-)view

Abstract

This tutorial-like presentation provides a survey of acoustical correlates of word and sentence stress, with emphasis on Germanic languages such as Dutch and English. It also reviews what is known about the perceptual cue value of the acoustic correlates of stress, and show that highly reliable correlates are not necessarily strong perceptual cues, and conversely that the strongest perceptual cue (pitch change) is an unreliable correlate. The issue of hierarchy among stress cues is considered A fairly popular idea is that the unmarked hierarchy proposed by Fry (pitch > duration > intensity/loudness > spectral quality) is changed when a particular cue does work in the segmental phonology of the language. For instance, if a language has a pure quantity contrast in its vowel system (long versus short vowels), duration can no longer be a strong cue to stress, and will assume a lower rank in the hierarchy. Relevant studies are reviewed and it is shown that this ‘functional' hypothesis finds little experimental support.