ISCA Archive Interspeech 2024
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2024

The prosody of the verbal prefix ge-: historical and experimental evidence

Chiara Riegger, Tina Bögel, George Walkden

This study investigates whether prosodic words in West Germanic languages are determined by morphological structure or rhythmic principles, i.e., the trochaic foot. To investigate this question, we looked at the unstressed verbal prefix ge- diachronically and synchronically. A corpus study of three Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German manuscripts showed that ge- often attaches to preceding auxiliaries and negation particles but not content words. The findings of the corpus study were verified through a production study in Modern German, measuring the closure duration of [g] as an indication of boundary strength between the prefix and the preceding word. Results showed that closure duration is reduced if the verb follows a monosyllabic auxiliary. Furthermore, we found no indicators that the prefix interacts with preceding content words or negation. Both results taken together support the trochaic foot structure based on rhythmic principles, but only in very restricted contexts.