ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2024
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2024

Word-final rhythmic prominence in Ukrainian

Beata Lukaszewicz, Janina Molczanow

As is well known, metrical prominence may coincide with boundary effects in word-final position. In this study, we report the results of an acoustic study of the metrical system of Ukrainian, designed to disentangle the potential domain-final lengthening from lexical and rhythmic stress in that language. The experiment is based on three-syllable words, differing in the position of lexical stress and rhythmic structure. We compare segmentally matched final syllables in triplets of words exhibiting three different metrical patters: [102], [010], [201]. The results point to statistically significant differences in vocalic duration, which depend on the stress level (rhythmic = 2, unstressed = 0, lexical = 1), and thus indicate that Ukrainian has word-final rhythmic prominence independent of boundary effects. We supplement those results with data from another acoustic study based on intrinsic (within-word) comparisons of vowel durations in the penultimate vs. final syllables. The comparison is based on three-syllable words lexically stressed on the first syllable, with penultimate and final vowels belonging to the same segmental category. The vowel in the final syllable (the rhythmic stress position) is significantly longer than the preceding vowel (the unstressed position). Our results corroborate the existence of word-final rhythmic stress in Ukrainian.