Prosodic structure and cycling in Greek and Korean
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1
University of Kent, English Language and Linguistics, United Kingdom
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2
University of California, San Diego, Linguistics, United States
This study deals with cycling as manifested in Greek and Korean. In the cycling paradigm, speakers produce short utterances in time with a metronome; in languages like English it has been shown that during cycling speakers keep stressed syllables in stable phase within the cycle defined by successive metronome beats. The hypothesis here was that speakers of Greek, in which stresses appear at irregular intervals, would achieve constant phasing by making prosodically appropriate adjustments, such as deleting stresses. For Korean, which has no stress at all, it was hypothesized that the onsets of accentual phrases (or APs, a prosodic constituent between the foot and the prosodic word but defined by its pitch contour) would act as beats i.e. similarly to stresses in English. For Greek, both phrases with regular stresses (e.g. three trochees as in ['mila 'θelun 'oli] “everyone wants apples”) and phrases showing clashes and lapses (stresses in successive syllables or more than two syllables apart respectively) were used. In Korean, all phrases were nine syllables and three APs long but the number of syllables per AP varied. The speakers of both languages could perform the task but exhibited differences relating to their language’s prosody. Greek speakers simply sped up between stress lapses, while they deleted the metrically weaker of the two stresses in clashes. In Korean, in which two experiments were conducted, the phase of AP-initial syllables was stable in both, but speakers were unable to use a waltz rhythm, as requested in the second experiment, as Korean prosody does not allow speakers to differentiate APs based on metrical strength. These results suggest that cycling is possible in languages with different prosodic systems, though prosody imposes limitations on the forms cycling can take; in turn, exploring these limitations offers a way of investigating issues in prosodic structure using cycling.
Acknowledgements
We thank our speakers for participating in this study. Support from the UCSD Committee on Research through grant RL-175G to A. Arvaniti with Y. Chung and A. Ritchart as RAs is hereby gratefully acknowledged.
Keywords:
speech rhythm,
prosodic structure,
metrical structure,
Greek,
Korean,
cycling paradigm
Conference:
14th Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop Birmingham 11th - 13th September 2013, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 11 Sep - 13 Sep, 2013.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Rhythm Production and Perception
Citation:
Arvaniti
A and
Chung
Y
(2013). Prosodic structure and cycling in Greek and Korean.
Conference Abstract:
14th Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop Birmingham 11th - 13th September 2013.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.214.00027
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Received:
15 Jul 2013;
Published Online:
24 Sep 2013.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Amalia Arvaniti, University of Kent, English Language and Linguistics, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF, United Kingdom, a.arvaniti@kent.ac.uk