Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T01:17:06.230Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acoustic correlates of lexical stress in Uyghur

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2016

Mahire Yakup  and
Joan A. Sereno
Mahire Yakup
Affiliation:
Nazarbayev University & University of [email protected]
Joan A. Sereno
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present study examined lexical stress patterns in Uyghur, a Turkic language. The main goal of this research was to isolate and determine which acoustic parameters provide cues to stress in Uyghur. A number of studies have investigated the phonetic correlates of lexical stress across the world's languages, with stressed syllables often longer in duration, higher in pitch, and greater in amplitude. The present study systematically investigated the acoustic cues to stress in Uyghur, examining duration, fundamental frequency, and amplitude. Three experiments were conducted: one utilizing minimal pairs in Uyghur, one examining disyllabic nouns in Uyghur that contrasted in the first syllable, and one investigating the interaction of lexical stress with Uyghur sentence intonation. The data consistently show that duration was a robust cue to stress in Uyghur, with less consistent effects for intensity. The data also clearly show that fundamental frequency was not a cue to lexical stress in Uyghur. Uyghur does not use the fundamental frequency to distinguish stressed from unstressed syllables. The results suggest that Uyghur does not pattern like a pitch-accent language (e.g. Turkish), but rather like a stress-accent language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , April 2016 , pp. 61 - 77
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Altmann, Heidi. 2006. Perception and production of second-languages stress: A cross-linguistic experimental study. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware.Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary E. 1986. Stress and non-stress accent. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary E. & Edwards, Jan. 1994. Articulatory evidence for differentiating stress categories. In Keating, Patricia A. (ed.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology III: Phonological structure and phonetic form, 7–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2011. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (version 5.3.03). http://www.praat.org/ (accessed 21 November 2011).Google Scholar
Chen, Yang, Robb, Michael, Gilbert, Harvey & Lerman, Jay. 2001. Vowel production by Mandarin speakers of English. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 15 (6), 427–440.Google Scholar
Dobrovolsky, Michael. 1999. The phonetics of Chuvash stress: Implications for phonology. 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XIV), Berkeley, CA, vol. 1, 539–542.Google Scholar
Engesæth, Tarjei, Yakup, Mahire & Dwyer, Arienne. 2009. Greetings from Teklimakan: A handbook of modern Uyghur, vol. 1. Lawrence, KS: KU [Kansas University] Scholar Works.Google Scholar
Flege, James E. & Hillenbrand, James. 1984. Limits on phonetic accuracy in foreign language speech production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 76 (3), 708–721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fry, Dennis B. 1955. Duration and intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 27 (4),765–768.Google Scholar
Fry, Dennis B. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech 1 (2), 126–152.Google Scholar
Gay, Thomas. 1978. Physiological and acoustic correlates of perceived stress. Language and Speech 21 (4), 347–353.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gordon, Matthew. 2004. A phonological and phonetic study of word-level stress in Chickasaw. International Journal of American Linguistics 70 (1), 1–32.Google Scholar
Hirst, Daniel & Di Cristo, Albert. 1998. A survey of intonation systems. In Hirst, Daniel & Di Cristo, Albert (eds.), Intonation systems: A survey of twenty languages, 1–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huss, Volker. 1978. English word stress in the post-nuclear position. Phonetica 35, 86–105.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. 2009. How (not) to do phonological typology: The case of pitch accent. Language Sciences 31, 213–238.Google Scholar
Jiang, Haiyan, Liu, Yan & Lu, Li. 2010. 维吾尔语词重音实验研究《民族语文》[An experimental study of stress in Uyghur words]. 第三期 [Ethnic study] 3, 67–71.Google Scholar
Juffs, Alan. 1990. Tone, syllable structure and inter language phonology: Chinese learners’ stress errors. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 2 (1), 99–117.Google Scholar
Kochanski, Greg, Grabe, Esther, Coleman, John & Rosner, Burton. 2005. Loudness predicts prominence: Fundamental frequency lends little. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 118 (2), 1038–1054.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 1996. Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lai, Yuwen. 2008. Acoustical realization and perception of English lexical stress by Mandarin learners. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas.Google Scholar
Lehiste, Ilse. 1970. Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Susannah V. 2005. Acoustic correlates of lexical accent in Turkish. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35, 73–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liang, Jie & Zhang, Qing. 2008. 维吾尔语双音节词重音的产出实验研究 [A production study on stress pattern in disyllabic words in the Uyghur language]. 《第八届中国语音学术会议暨庆贺吴宗济先生百岁华诞语言科学前沿问题国际研讨会论文集》[Proceedings of the 8th Phonetics Conference of China (PCC 2008) and the International Symposium on Phonetic Frontiers (ISPF)].Google Scholar
Lieberman, Philip. 1960. Some acoustic correlates of word stress in American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 33, 451–454.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Philip. 1967. Intonation, perception, and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lindström, Eva & Remijsen, Bert. 2005. Aspects of prosody of Kuot, a language where intonation ignores stress. Linguistics 43 (4), 839–870.Google Scholar
Morton, John & Jassem, Wiktor. 1965. Acoustic correlates of stress. Language and Speech 8 (3), 159–181.Google Scholar
Nakatani, Lloyd H. & Aston, Carletta H.. 1978. Perceiving stress patterns of words in sentences. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 63, S55.Google Scholar
Nash, Carlos M. 2005. A phonetic and phonological approach to stress in Sinhala verbs. Workshop on Sinhala Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 4–5 June. http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/research/cmnash_2005_stress_verb.pdf.Google Scholar
Ortega-Llebaria, Marta & Prieto, Pilar. 2011. Acoustic correlates of stress in Central Catalan and Castilian Spanish. Language and Speech 54 (1), 73–97.Google Scholar
Recasens, Daniel & Espinosa, Aina. 2006. Dispersion and variability of Catalan vowels. Speech Communication 48, 645–666.Google Scholar
Saimaiti, Maimati & Feng, Zhiwei. 2007. A syllabification algorithm and syllable statistics of written Uyghur. 4th Corpus Linguistics Conference, Birmingham, UK. http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-artslaw/corpus/conference-archives/2007/153Paper.pdf.Google Scholar
Sereno, Joan A. 1986. Stress pattern differentiation of form class in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 79, S36.Google Scholar
Sereno, Joan A. & Jongman, Allard. 1995. Acoustic correlates of grammatical class. Language and Speech 38, 57–76.Google Scholar
Sluijter, Agaath M. C. & van Heuven, Vincent J.. 1996a. Acoustic correlates of linguistic stress and accent in Dutch and American English. 4th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Philadelphia, PA, 630–633.Google Scholar
Sluijter, Agaath M. C. & van Heuven, Vincent J.. 1996b. Spectral balance as an acoustic correlate of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 100 (4), 2471–2485.Google Scholar
Turk, Alice E. & Sawusch, James R.. 1996. The processing of duration and intensity cues to prominence. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 99 (6), 3782–3790.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yaqup, Abliz & Gheyurani, Ghenizat. 1999. Uyghur Tilining Izahliq Lughiti [Uyghur explanatory dictionary]. Urumqi: Xinjang Xelg Neshriyati [Xinjiang People's Publishing House].Google Scholar
Zhang, Yanhong & Francis, Alexander L.. 2010. The weighting of vowel quality in native and non-native listeners' perception of English lexical stress. Journal of Phonetics 38 (2), 260–271.Google Scholar
Zhang, Yanhong, Nissen, Shawn L. & Francis, Alexander L.. 2008. Acoustic characteristics of English lexical stress produced by Mandarin speakers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123 (6), 4498–4513.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed