ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014

Accentual phrases in Slovak and Hungarian

Katalin Mády, Uwe D. Reichel, Štefan Beňuš

Languages with primarily delimitative function of word stress commonly make use of accentual phrases (APs) in their intonational phonology (e.g. Tamil or French). Slovak and Hungarian are genetically unrelated but geographically close languages with word-initial lexical stress. In this paper we compared the stylised f0 of single accent groups (AGs) with the f0 level pattern of the entire intonational phrase (IP) to test if AGs are relevant for the intonational phonology of Slovak and Hungarian. Steep f0 slopes with a recurring pattern (rising or falling) and large deviations from IP level patterns were interpreted as evidence for the autonomy of the AG in the given language. The results suggest that Hungarian is indeed a language in which accent groups form a unit on their own, however, such evidence was not found for Slovak.