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Prosodic prominence in a stressless language: An acoustic investigation of Indonesian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2021

ANGELIKI ATHANASOPOULOU Open the ORCID record for ANGELIKI ATHANASOPOULOU [Opens in a new window] ,
IRENE VOGEL  and
NADYA PINCUS
ANGELIKI ATHANASOPOULOU
Affiliation:
School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures, University of Calgary, Craigie Hall D310, 2500 University Dr. N.W., Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canadaangeliki.athanasopou@ucalgary.ca
IRENE VOGEL
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Delaware, 125 E Main St., Newark, DE19711, USAivogel@udel.edunpincus@udel.edu
NADYA PINCUS
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Delaware, 125 E Main St., Newark, DE19711, USAivogel@udel.edunpincus@udel.edu
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Abstract

Although it has been proposed that all languages may have some lexical stress property, recent studies of (Standard) Indonesian have concluded, based primarily on perception, that lexical stress is not present in this language. While it is philosophically problematic to prove the non-existence of a phenomenon, we examine data from a large-scale production study for both direct and indirect evidence of stress, contributing to the growing body of literature in this field. In the first case, evidence is sought that indicates that a particular syllable in a word exhibits acoustic properties typically associated with prominence (i.e. fundamental frequency (f0), duration, intensity, vowel quality). In the second case, evidence of enhancement of these properties on a particular syllable under focus is sought, for a more abstract stress property that is not overtly manifested at the word level. Although we find no evidence of lexical prominence, we observe acoustic patterns consistent with a higher level prominence corresponding to focus, manifested by strong (Intonational Phrase) boundary properties. Overall, our findings reveal that there is strong support for a class of languages lacking lexical stress, and in the absence of a stressed syllable to enhance, focus may be manifested prosodically as boundary properties.

Keywords

focusIndonesianproductionstressstressless languagestypology
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 695 - 735
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We would like to thank Yosephine Susanto, Yanti, Lanny Hidajat, and Yohana Veniranda for their invaluable help in constructing and running our experiment in Jakarta, all the individuals who participated in the experiment, and the three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees. This work was supported by a summer grant to the authors by the University of Delaware.

References

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