Stability of tonal alignment: the case of Greek prenuclear accents

Amalia Arvaniti*, D. Robert Ladd  and Ineke Mennen

* University of Cyprus, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures,
P.O. Box
537, Nicosia 1678, Cyprus.
  University of Edinburgh, Department of Linguistics, AFB, George Square,
Edinburgh, EH8 9LL, U.K.

Greek prenuclear accents show a sharp rise that starts near the onset of
the accented syllable and peaks on the following unstressed syllable if
there is one. We have elsewhere presented evidence for analysing
these accents as consisting of a L(ow) and a H(igh) target. In a first
experiment exploring the factors that affect the location of the H
target, we discovered that in words with antepenultimate stress the H
is consistently aligned just after the onset of the first postaccentual
vowel. In a second experiment we replicated this finding, showing that
the alignment of the H is not affected by variations in the duration of
the accented syllable. A third experiment showed that for some
speakers the alignment of the H may be affected by tonal crowding
when the accented syllable is close to the end of the word and/or close
to the next accent. Overall, however, the results show that the L and H
targets are independently aligned relative to the segmental string: the
accentual rise is neither of fixed slope nor or fixed duration. This
result is difficult to accommodate in a theory that views pitch
movements as the primes of intonational structure.