ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2024
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2024

Word Stress and Prosodic Events in Eastern Armenian

Samuel Chakmakjian, Hossep Dolatian, Stavros Skopeteas

In languages with word-final stress, it is always a challenge to distinguish whether prosodic events are associated with the word-final stress (pitch accents) or the right edge of the prosodic word (edge tones). The present study focuses on Eastern Armenian, where stress occurs within the last non-schwa syllable – excluding certain unstressed suffixes. To determine the associate of nuclear/prenuclear tonal events, we conducted a speech production experiment (scripted speech) with 10 native speakers of Eastern Armenian. Target words, varying in stress placement (final, penult), were recorded as objects in SOV sentences. Utterances with these targets were performed as answers to questions that had different types of focus: pre-nuclear (V-focus) and nuclear (O-focus). Our Autosegmental-Metrical analysis, complemented by aggregated F0 contours, reveals that (a) a high pitch target demarcates the pre-nuclear domain from the nucleus, aligning with the right edge of the target word; (b) a high pitch target associates with the stressed syllable of the nucleus. These findings allow us to establish a distinction between two types of H-targets in Eastern Armenian: edge tones delimiting pre-nuclear material (H-) and pitch accents (H*) at the intonational nucleus.