Durational effects of phrasal stress
Alice Turk, Department of Linguistics & English Language, University of
Edinburgh
1. Introduction
This chapter represents a synthesis of work on the stretches of speech affected by
phrasal stress. I will begin with a discussion of two clear findings, namely 1) Phrasal
stress can affect the duration of multiple syllables, and 2) The durational effects of
phrasal stress can be influenced by constituent structure. Then I discuss two
interpretations of these findings 1) that phrasal stress lengthens a continuous domain,
and 2) that it targets multiple sites, some of which appear to be optional. I present
evidence that supports the second interpretation, and end by discussing remaining
problems and questions.
Phrasal stress is referred to by a variety of terms, including (phrasal) accent, phrasalor sentence- stress, and phrasal prominence, and the topic of this paper has been
variously described as accentual lengthening, lengthening related to phrasal stress,
and focus-related lengthening. For the purposes of this paper, I assume that these
terms are largely interchangeable. I assume that phrasal stress is part of prosodic
structure and is therefore abstract, and has many different phonetic correlates,
including duration. It is worth noting that durational phenomena have traditionally
been called “lengthenings” and “shortenings” as though there is some default duration
that gets adjusted in different contexts. I will avoid referring to the durational
correlates of phrasal stress in this way, in order to leave open the possibility that
speech interval durations do not involve adjusting default durations, but are instead
computed for each context on the basis of abstract phonological information (prosodic
structure and segmental information), movement costs, and task requirements such as
rate of speech etc.
2. Two clear findings about the stretches of speech whose durations are affected
by phrasal stress.
2.1. Multiple syllables can be affected
Previous research on phrasal stress has shown that its durational effects are not
confined to a single segment or syllable (Chen, 2006 for Chinese; Suomi, 2007, Nakai
et al. 2012, and Suomi et al. 2013 for Finnish 1 ; Suomi et al. 2013 for Estonian,
Heldner & Strangert 2001 for Swedish; Bouchhioua 2007 for Tunisian Arabic;
Cambier-Langeveld & Turk, 1999; Eefting 1991; Nooteboom 1972; Sluijter 1995;
Sluijter & van Heuven 1995 for Dutch; Sluijter 1995; Turk & Sawusch 1995, 1997;
Turk & White 1999, Turk & Shattuck-Hufnagel 2000, White & Turk 2010, Dimitrova
& Turk 2012 for English). In English and Dutch, all segments in monosyllabic CVC
1
Finnish studies have found phrasal-stress related durational effects only for
contrastive phrasal stress, not for “normal”, non-contrastive phrasal stress, in broad
focus contexts (Suomi et al. 2013).
words (e.g. bake) can be longer when the word is phrasally stressed than when it is
not (Sluijter 1995; Turk & Sawusch 1995, 1997; Cambier-Langeveld & Turk 1999,
Turk & White, 1999). And several studies have observed multiple syllables within a
word can be longer when the word is phrasally stressed. For example, Eefting (1991)
found that all syllables in Dutch words such as ge’kakel ‘cackling’ are longer when
the word is phrasally stressed than when it is not.
2. The effect of phrasal stress on duration is influenced by constituent structure
Several studies have shown that the effect of phrasal stress on duration is influenced
by constituent structure, e.g. word boundary location in English and Dutch. English
studies suggest that this effect is manifested in two ways. First, the magnitude of the
durational effect is greater on the primary stressed syllable of monosyllabic words
than it is on the primary stressed syllable of disyllabic words. Studies of the effect of
phrasal stress on identical phoneme sequences such as bake enforce vs. bacon force
and there foursquare vs. therefore square (Turk & White 1999) show 23% difference
between phrasally stressed vs. non-phrasally stressed monosyllabic words, e.g. bake
in bake enforce, there in there foursquare, and a 16% difference on the same syllables
in disyllabic words, e.g. bac- in bacon force and there- in therefore square (Turk &
White 1999; White & Turk 2010). Secondly, in homophonous sequences such as
these in English and Dutch (Turk & Sawusch 1995, 1997, Turk & White 1999,
Cambier-Langeveld & Turk 1999, Turk & Shattuck-Hufnagel 2000), the effect of
phrasal stress on a segments or syllable immediately following the stress is greater if
these syllables belong to the same word as the phrasal stress, than if the segments or
syllables are separated by a word boundary. For example, Cambier-Langeveld & Turk
(1999) showed that e.g. -da in PANDA masten ‘panda masts’ is significantly longer
than e.g. –da in PAN damasten ‘pan damask’.
Studies of the effects of accent on polymorphemic words in English and Dutch, e.g.
therefore, reisdoel ‘destination’ suggested that neither foot nor morpheme boundaries
block these effects; e.g. -fore of therefore showed effects of comparable magnitude to
e.g. –on of bacon (13% in Turk & White 1999).
In Chinese, manipulations of the pragmatic focus domain also shows an influence of
the constituent which is pragmatically focused. For example, Chen (2006) observed
that when a four syllable place name is placed under corrective focus, all of the
syllables are longer than when the word is not in focus, but when only a subset of the
syllables of the word are correctively focused, only a subset of syllables is affected.
For example, if only the first syllable is focused, the first and second syllables are
longer compared to the no focus condition, with no effect on third and fourth syllables,
but if the second syllable is the only one focused, the first, second and third syllables
are longer compared with the same syllables in the no focus condition, with no effect
on the fourth syllable.
3. What is the best way to describe the affected syllables?
Discussions with Tina Cambier-Langeveld led me to understand that, logically
speaking, there are several possible ways of using duration to “highlight” a word or
focused constituent. One way is to make an entire constituent relatively long when
highlighting it (the continuous domain hypothesis); another is to use relatively long
durations special places in the constituent (the multiple site hypothesis). For example,
in languages with word-stress like English, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, or Arabic,
specifying relatively long durations for special places in the constituent might involve
durational effects of two types 1) on stressed syllables, and/or 2) on word edges,
which would have the effect of highlighting the word by demarcating it. It is often
difficult to distinguish these hypotheses because investigations of syllable durations in
mono-, di-, and even some tri-syllabic words can be interpreted in either framework.
In Section 3.1.1, I discuss some conflicting continuous domain interpretations and
other problems with the continuous domain hypothesis, and in Section 3.2, I present
evidence from English four-syllable words that supports the multiple (optional) site
hypothesis. Finally, in Section 4., I discuss remaining problems.
3.1. The continuous domain hypothesis.
Most of the observed durational effects of phrasal stress have been interpreted in
terms of the continuous domain hypothesis, because a continuous domain of multiple
syllables has been affected in most studies. For example, Eefting’s (1991) study
found effects on all syllables in Dutch trisyllabic words like ge’kakel (primary wordstress on the second syllable), and Sluijter (1995) found effects on both syllables in
Dutch words like ‘kanon and ka’non, Suomi (2007) found effects on a continuous trisyllabic domain in Finnish four-syllable words, and Turk & White (1999) found
effects on all syllables in English words like ‘catapult.
3.1.1. Problems with the continuous domain hypothesis
However, there are several problems with the continuous domain hypothesis, which I
outline below. These include disagreements over the appropriate domain, “spill-over”
and anticipatory effects outside the proposed domains, effects of different magnitudes
on different syllables, inter-speaker differences in the affected domains, and syllables
within proposed domains that appear to be skipped.
Disagreements over the appropriate domain
The first problem with the continuous domain hypothesis emerged from
disagreements over the appropriate domain for the durational effects of phrasal stress.
For example Eefting (1991) and Sluijter (1995) proposed the word as the domain of
phrasal-stress-related durational effects, whereas Turk & Sawusch (1995) proposed a
unit beginning with the primary word-stress and extending to the end of the word, and
Heldner & Strangert (2001) proposed the primary stressed syllable + one following
unstressed syllable, and Suomi (2007) proposed a domain that begins at a word initial
primary stressed syllable and extends throughout two following unstressed syllables.
Because early proposals for the word as domain came from Dutch studies, and Turk
& Sawusch’s (1995) proposal of a unit beginning at the primary stress and extending
to the end of the word was for English, an early idea was that there might be crosslinguistic differences in the domain, i.e. the word in Dutch and a smaller unit in
English. However, Cambier-Langeveld & Turk’s (1999) study of Dutch and
Sluijter’s (1995) and Turk & White’s (1999) studies on English showed that the
syllables affected by phrasal stress were actually very similar in Dutch and English
when experimental methods were the same for the two languages.
Spill-over and anticipatory effects
These experiments showed that whether word-initial unstressed syllables were
affected by phrasal stress in the same word depended on the presence or absence of a
preceding phrasal stress across a word boundary: e.g. when –en in enforce was
preceded by a phrasal stress, as in BAKE enforce, then there was no difference in its
duration and its duration in a phrasally stressed word, e.g. bake ENFORCE. However,
when e.g. enforce in bake ENFORCE was compared with the same word in a phrase
without any phrasal stress, en- was slightly longer in e.g. bake ENFORCE than in
bake enforce (4% effect). These findings suggested two things 1) that word-initial
unstressed syllables in phrasally stressed words, e.g. en- in ENFORCE could be
longer than the same syllables in non-phrasally stressed words, e.g. enforce,
consistent with the word domain hypothesis, and 2) that durational effects from a
preceding phrasally stressed syllable, e.g. from BAKE in BAKE enforce, could spill
over across a word boundary, and affect the initial unstressed syllable, e.g. en-,
resulting in e.g. en- in BAKE enforce longer than en- in bake enforce. Crucially, these
“spill-over” effects occur outside the proposed word domain.
These spill-over effects from a preceding phrasally stressed syllable across a word
boundary were also found in Turk & White (1999): e.g. Mark in BLESS#Mark#now
was 5% longer than e.g. Mark in bless#Mark#NOW, a small, but statistically
significant effect. Similarly, Chen’s 2006 experiment on Chinese showed durational
effects on the syllable immediately following the pragmatic focus domain that were
smaller in magnitude that the effects within the pragmatic focus domain. Chen’s
experiment also showed anticipatory effects of similar magnitude as the spill-over
effects on the syllable preceding the pragmatic focus domain2. It is worth noting that
not all studies show statistically significant spill-over effects in context where they
might be expected, e.g. Cambier-Langeveld & Turk (1999) found spill-over effects on
a function word e.g. de that followed the phrasal stress across a word boundary in e.g.
GOOI de tak ‘throw the branch’, but this small effect did not reach significance.
Where statistically significant, spill-over and anticipatory effects are problematic for
the continuous domain hypothesis because they suggest that small effects can exist
that fall outside the proposed domains—i.e. outside the word in languages like
English and Dutch and outside the pragmatic focus domain in languages like Chinese.
Effects of different magnitudes on different syllables
Another problem for the continuous domain hypotheses is that different syllables
within the proposed domains often showed durational effects of different magnitudes.
For example, in Dutch, where the word is the proposed domain of the durational
effects of phrasal stress, Eefting found the largest effect of phrasal stress on the
second, primary-stressed syllable in e.g. ge’kakel ‘cackling’, with smaller effects on
the first and third (unstressed) syllables. Similar differences are found in Finnish
(Suomi 2007). Because early studies (e.g. Eefting 1991) did not compare the same
syllables in different positions in a word, it was possible that these differences were
due to the segmental compositions of the syllables. However, later studies where the
same syllables were compared in different positions in the word confirmed effects of
different magnitudes on different syllables. For example, word initial unstressed
syllables, e.g. en- in ENFORCE show durational effects of phrasal stress that are not
always observed, and, when present, are much smaller than effects on word-final
unstressed syllables, e.g. en- in BACON (see also Turk & Sawusch 1997, CambierLangeveld & Turk 1999).
2
The fact that e.g. Mark in BLESS#Mark#now was longer than Mark in
bless#Mark#NOW in Turk & White’s (1999) experiment suggests that spill-over
effects may be stronger in English than anticipatory effects.
Inter-speaker differences
A third problem with the continuous domain hypothesis is that different speakers
appear to lengthen different syllables when a word is phrasally stressed. For example,
Turk & White 1999 showed that 1 out of 6 participants in that study failed to lengthen
the final syllable in e.g. bacon force, and 2 out of 6 participants failed to show a
difference on the initial syllable in e.g. bake enforce vs. bake ENFORCE.
Some syllables within a proposed lengthening domain appear to be skipped.
A fourth and final problem with the continuous domain hypothesis is that experiments
on longer, four-syllable, words, suggest that some syllables within a proposed domain
can fail to show durational effects of phrasal stress. Dimitrova & Turk’s (2012) study
of words like ‘presidency (primary word stress on the first syllable) and ,demo’cratic
(primary word stress on the 3rd syllable, secondary stress on the first syllable) showed
that the 3rd syllable in words like ‘presidency showed no effect of phrasal stress on its
duration, nor did the 2nd syllable in words like ,demo’cratic.
3.2. The multiple (optional) site hypothesis
The above problems motivate the consideration of an alternative view, namely that
phrasal stress targets multiple sites within a phrasally-stressed word or focused
constituent, i.e. the stressed syllable and word-edges, as well as adjacent spill-over
and/or anticipatory sites. On this view, longer stressed syllable(s) in a phrasally
stressed word compared to a non-phrasally stressed word highlights the word by
lengthening prominent syllables within it, and lengthening word edges highlights the
word by demarcating it. Support for the view that phrasally stressed words are more
saliently demarcated than non-phrasally stressed words comes from findings of a
greater likelihood of pauses after phrasally-stressed words in Swedish (Strangert
2003), and F0-related and other phenomena at the edges of focused constituents in
Japanese, Korean, Chichewa and Bengali ((for Japanese: Pierrehumbert and Beckman
1988; Venditti, Maekawa and Beckman 2008; but see Kubozono 2006; for Korean:
Jun 1993; Jun et al. 2006; Kenstowicz & Sohn 1997, Kim 1997; for Chichewa;
Inkelas 1990; for Bengali: Hayes & Lahiri 1991).
Spill-over and anticipatory effects are assumed to be due to a different mechanism
altogether: van der Wel, Fleckenstein, Jax & Rosenbaum (2007) propose that
parameters of movement (e.g. spatial and timing parameters) are set by changing
parameter settings used in previous movements, and that there is a cost related to the
size of parameter changes. They propose that “spill-over” and anticipatory effects
might be due to trying to minimize the total magnitude of parameter changes from
one movement to the next. Their study of hand-movement in a non-speech task
involving moving from target to target with occasional intervening obstacles provides
supporting evidence in the spatial domain.
Available evidence is largely consistent with the view that phrasal stress affects the
duration of a set of distinct sites, including stressed syllable(s), domain edges, and
additional spill-over and anticipatory sites. For example, Dimitrova & Turk’s (2012)
study of four-syllable words shows effects of phrasal stress on word-initial syllables,
word-final syllables (edge effects), primary stressed syllables and secondary stressed
syllables, in addition to spill-over sites immediately following primary stressed
syllables. For example, words like presidency show lengthening on the first (postboundary onset and stressed syllable), second (spill-over) and last syllable (preboundary); words like democratic show effects on the 1st (post-boundary and
secondary stress), 3rd (primary stress) and 4th syllables (pre-boundary), and words like
suffocating show effects on all four syllables (1st: primary stress, 2nd: spill-over, 3rd:
secondary stress, and 4th: pre-boundary), although the effect on the last syllable rhyme
only tended towards significance in that study. Chinese (Chen 2006) shows greater
effects on final syllables within disyllabic pragmatic focus domains, and shows
consistent anticipatory and spill-over effects. The Finnish effects reported in Suomi
(2007) are also consistent with the multiple site view, with effects observed on initial,
primary stressed syllables, the adjacent unstressed syllable (spill-over) and secondary
stressed syllables.
3.2.1. Prediction of the multiple site hypothesis: Durational effects at different
sites should show different durational patterns on sub-syllabic constituents
A prediction of the multiple site hypothesis is that durational effects at different sites
should show different durational patterns on sub-syllabic constituents. This is because
constituent edge effects on duration are known to be distributed differently than the
effects of phrasal stress within the syllable that is most affected (Beckman & Edwards
1992). Phrasal stress effects are fairly uniform throughout the syllable, with relatively
large effects on the onset and nucleus, and smaller effects on the coda reported in
some studies, dependent to some extent on segment type and perhaps on language
(Turk & Sawusch 1995, 1997, Cambier-Langeveld & Turk 1999). Phrase boundaries
primarily affect the duration of the phrase-initial segment (Oller 1973, Fougeron &
Keating 1997, White 2002, Keating 2006, Bombien et al. 2010) and phrase-final
syllable rhymes, with smaller, additional effects on syllables associated with primary
word stress within the phrase-final word (Wightman et al. 1992, Turk & ShattuckHufnagel 2007).
Eefting’s (1991) results for e.g. ge’kakel ‘cackling’ appear to be consistent with these
patterns. The effect of phrasal stress on the first syllable is concentrated on the onset,
consistent with onset edge marking, with a smaller effect on the nucleus (possibly in
anticipation of the upcoming stressed syllable, or spill-over from the onset). The
effect on the last syllable is concentrated on the rhyme, consistent with an edge
marking mechanism, and the effect on the central syllable is more evenly spread
between onset and rhyme, consistent with a stress-related mechanism.
Dimitrova & Turk’s (2012) study of the durational effects of phrasal stress on English
four syllable words also showed results consistent with this hypothesis. Phrasal stress
had qualitatively different patterns of effects on word-initial syllables vs. stressed
syllables. Word-initial syllables showed greater effects on onsets than rhymes, and
word-final syllables showed greater effects on rhymes than onsets, consistent with the
edge marking view. Effects on primary stressed syllables were more uniform,
consistent with the view that a different, stress-marking mechanism was used for
these syllables. The remaining affected syllables were secondary stressed syllables
(e.g. 3rd syllable in ‘suffo,cating), and syllables immediately following the primary
stress (suggestive of spill-over effects).
Although results for English and Dutch support the Multiple Site prediction that
different sites should show different distributions of durational effects on sub-syllabic
constituents for edge vs. stressed syllable effects, Chinese (Chen 2006) shows
relatively uniform effects on sub-syllabic constituents throughout the pragmatic focus
domain. It is unclear why this should be so, and raises the question of a possible
cross-linguistic difference (see discussion in Section 4).
3.2.2. Different priorities for different lengthening sites
Dimitrova & Turk’s (2012) results suggest that some sites always, or nearly always,
show durational effects of phrasal stress, whereas others may or may not, depending
on speaker preference, word type, and possibly rate of speech. Dimitrova & Turk
(2012) found that effects on primary stressed syllables were more reliable than effects
on final syllables. This is evidenced by reliable effects on primary stressed syllables
for all participants in words of all three stress patterns they studied (e.g. ‘presidency,
demo’cratic and ‘suffo,cating), whereas effects at the pre-boundary word edge were
less reliable: words like suffocating showed only a tendency towards significant
lengthening on the final syllable rhyme. In addition, effects on primary stressed
syllables were more reliable than effects on secondary stressed syllables: effects on
secondary stressed syllables were only observed on the third syllable of e.g.
‘suffo,cating; effects on the first, secondary-stressed syllable in e.g. ,demo’cratic were
restricted to the onset consonant and could thus be interpreted as a word-edge effect.
3.2.3. Optional edge effects and inter-speaker variability
Turk & White’s (1999) individual speaker results mentioned earlier support the idea
that edge sites may be optional for some speakers. Dimitrova & Turk also found
some optionality in their data; one speaker showed no evidence of a phrasal stress
related effect on syllable 4 of words like democratic. In addition, Dimitrova & Turk
(2012) observed variability in the magnitudes of the effects of phrasal stress for
different speakers, and speculate that this could have to do with speaker preference
and possibly rate of speech.
4. Discussion
Taken together, the findings reviewed here suggest that the Multiple (optional) Site
hypothesis provides a better account of existing data relating to the durational effects
of phrasal stress in English than the Continuous Domain hypothesis. The Multiple
(optional) Site hypothesis also provides a plausible account in other languages, e.g.
Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Tunisian Arabic, and Chinese.
Possible cross-linguistic differences
It is difficult to know how many of the findings in the literature for different
languages are due to genuine cross-linguistic differences, or instead, to
methodological differences across studies. For example, Heldner & Strangert’s
(2001) study of Swedish found no phrasal-stress related durational effects on final
syllables in trisyllabic words with primary stress on the first syllable, with second and
third syllables unstressed. Similarly, Suomi found no edge marking of final syllables
in Finnish phrasally stressed four-syllable words. Although it could be that Swedish
and Finnish do not mark the edges of phrasally stressed words in contrast to English
and Dutch, another possibility is that the phrasal context they used (e.g. the target
word was a verb in a Subject Verb Object construction in Swedish) discouraged
optional edge marking of the verb, in contrast to the context used in Dimitrova &
Turk (2012), where the target word occurred before a prepositional or adverbial
phrase. To find out whether this potential cross-linguistic difference is real, it will be
important to study multiple languages using materials that are similar as possible.
Some observed findings are perhaps more likely to be language-(type) specific, such
as those that have been associated with short vs. long phonemic distinctions in
quantity languages. For example, Heldner & Strangert (2001) observed that
phonemically long vowels in Swedish showed durational effects of phrasal stress but
phonemically short vowels did not. Nakai et al. (2012) also observed quantity-related
constraints on the durational effects of prosodic factors in Finnish, although the
Finnish constraints may be different from those that occur in Swedish.
To conclude, the way speakers use duration to signal phrasal stress has turned out to
be quite complex. It involves multiple sites and multiple mechanisms, some of which
are optional. The extent to which the durational effects of phrasal stress are modulated
by phonological features of individual languages is still a matter of debate and is
worthy of further investigation.
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Acknowledgements
Vincent van Heuven and his students have made several major contributions in
advancing our understanding of acoustic correlates of word- and phrasal- stress. For
one, Vincent van Heuven and Agaath Sluijter will be remembered for adding spectral
balance to the list of phonetic correlates of stress (Sluijter & van Heuven 1996).
Another contribution was his care to disambiguate word- vs. phrase- level prominence,
following Huss (1978). The materials he included in his experiments often included
words of different stress patterns both in- and out- of focus; these materials allowed
him to separately determine the correlates of word- vs. phrasal- stress (e.g. Sluijter &
van Heuven 1995). A third contribution was showing how to quantify the relative
contribution of each type of acoustic correlate in signaling stress. For example, a
hallmark of his work was to study a range of correlates and to study their relative
contribution in signaling stress with the aid of a statistical tool called discriminant
analysis (van Heuven & Sluijter 1996). For example, this technique established that
for English and Dutch, duration and spectral balance were the most important
correlates of word-level stress (Sluijter & van Heuven 1996).
The focus of this chapter relates to his work on the correlates of phrasal stress,
particularly the work of his and Agaath Sluijter’s investigating the stretches of speech
whose duration is affected by phrasal stress. In doing my own work on this topic, I
had the privilege of interacting with two of Vincent van Heuven’s students, Agaath
Sluijter and Tina Cambier-Langeveld, and one of his colleagues, Yiya Chen. Through
these collaborations, interactions and through my own subsequent work with other
collaborators, our understanding of these effects has evolved.