Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:38:06.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What do compounds and noun phrases tell us about tonal targets in Finnish?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

Anja Arnhold
Anja Arnhold*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 2E7, Alberta, Canada. [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

This article compares three accounts of Finnish intonation using a perception experiment with manipulated f0 contours. The experiment involved compound/noun phrase minimal pairs differing in f0 pattern. To address the question of tonal specification, manipulations changed f0 contours of recorded compound words, associating them with f0 patterns having different components of the naturally occurring f0 rise-fall contour. Thus, the study investigated which tonal targets were crucial for the perception of a complete tonal contour inducing a noun phrase interpretation. Results suggested that the falling part of the rise-falls, modelled as realisations of a high and a following low target, was essential. They furthermore revealed evidence for these targets being associated with prosodic phrases, as well as for Finnish tonal targets being characterised by a flexibility that contrasts with accent realisations in languages like English.

Keywords

accentsFinnishintonationperceptionphrase languagesphrasingtonal specification
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 38 , Special Issue 2: Prosody in the Nordic Languages , October 2015 , pp. 221 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2015 

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

REFERENCES

Arnhold, Anja. 2014. Finnish Prosody: Studies in Intonation and Phrasing. Ph.D. dissertation, Goethe-University Frankfurt.Google Scholar
Arnhold, Anja. 2015a. Complex focus marking in Finnish: Expanding the data landscape. Ms., University of Alberta.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnhold, Anja. 2015b. Finnish as a phrase language. Ms., University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Arnhold, Anja, Vainio, Martti, Suni, Antti & Järvikivi, Juhani. 2010. Intonation of Finnish verbs. Speech Prosody 2010, 100054:1–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald. 2008. Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald, Davidson, Douglas J. & Bates, Douglas M.. 2008. Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59 (4), 390–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas M., Maechler, Martin & Bolker, Ben. 2011. lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes. http://lme4.r-forge.r-project.org/ (accessed 24 July 2011).Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2010. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ (accessed 15 March 2010).Google Scholar
Bruce, Gösta. 1977. Swedish Word Accents in Sentence Perspective. Lund: Gleerup.Google Scholar
Chen, Aoju. 2011. What's in a rise: Evidence for an off-ramp analysis of Dutch intonation. 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), 448–451.Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline. 2010. Indian languages as intonational ‘phrase languages’. In Hasnain, Imtiaz & Chaudhury, Shreesh (eds.), Problematizing Language Studies: Festschrift for Rama Agnihotri, 288–312. Delhi: Aakar Books.Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline. 2015. Intonation and Prosodic Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2000. The phonology of intonation. Glot International 6 (9/10), 271–284.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2008. Semantic judgments as evidence for the intonational structure of Dutch. Speech Prosody 2008, 297–300.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce & Lahiri, Aditi. 1991. Bengali intonational phonology. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 9, 47–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iivonen, Antti. 1998. Intonation in Finnish. In Hirst, Daniel & Cristo, Albert Di (eds.), Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages, 311–327. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. Florian. 2008. Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language 59 (4), 434–446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ladd, D. Robert. 1996. Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mixdorff, Hansjörg, Vainio, Martti, Werner, Stefan & Järvikivi, Juhani. 2002. The manifestation of linguistic information in prosodic features of Finnish. Speech Prosody 2002, 511–514.Google Scholar
Niemi, Jussi. 1984. Word Level Stress and Prominence in Finnish and English: Acoustic Experiments on Production and Perception. Joensuu: University of Joensuu.Google Scholar
O'Dell, Michael. 2003. Intrinsic Timing and Quantity in Finnish. Tampere: Tampere University Press.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 1980. The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team. 2011. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. http://www.R-project.org/ (accessed 8 July 2011).Google Scholar
Suomi, Kari. 2009. Durational elasticity for accentual purposes in Northern Finnish. Journal of Phonetics 37 (4), 397–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suomi, Kari, Toivanen, Juhani & Ylitalo, Riikka. 2008. Finnish Sound Structure: Phonetics, Phonology, Phonotactics and Prosody. Oulu: University of Oulu.Google Scholar
Vainio, Martti & Järvikivi, Juhani. 2007. Focus in production: Tonal shape, intensity and word order. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121 (2), EL55–EL61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vainio, Martti, Järvikivi, Juhani, Aalto, Daniel & Suni, Antti. 2010. Phonetic tone signals phonological quantity and word structure. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 128 (3), 1313–1321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Välimaa-Blum, Riitta. 1988. Finnish Existential Clauses – Their Syntax, Pragmatics and Intonation. Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Välimaa-Blum, Riitta. 1993. A pitch accent analysis of intonation in Finnish. Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 12, 82–94.Google Scholar
Xu, Yi. 1999. Effects of tone and focus on the formation and alignment of f0 contours. Journal of Phonetics 27, 55–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, Yi. 2005. Speech melody as articulatorily implemented communicative functions. Speech Communication 46 (3–4), 220–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar