ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014

Distinguishing Phrase-Final and Phrase-Medial High Tone on Finally Stressed Words in Turkish

Canan Ipek, Sun-Ah Jun

The goal of this paper is to investigate the nature of the high tones realized on finally stressed words in Turkish. Following Ipek &Jun’s [1] AM model of intonational phonology of Turkish, it was hypothesized that the high tone realized on the last syllable of a phrase (i.e., Intermediate Phrase (ip)) is realized differently from that of a phrase-medial prosodic word (PW), reflecting the prosodic hierarchy. Acoustic data show that an ip-final High tone shows larger f0 rise than a PW-final High tone, and the ip-final syllable is longer than the PW-final syllable. Furthermore, the degree of coarticulation is weaker across an ip boundary than a PW boundary. These findings support the prosodic structure and tonal categories proposed in Ipek &Jun’s [1] model of Turkish intonation.