Word accent and intonation in Baltic

• We examine the realization of word accent contrasts in Standard Latvian and East Aukštaitian Lithuanian across intonational contexts. In our Latvian data the contrast is manifested as level vs. falling pitch in most contexts, in addition to a durational difference. In Aukštaitian Lithuanian, instead, differences in vowel quality and duration cue the lexical contrast in the nuclei that we examine. While Latvian retains a tonal contrast, in Aukštaitian Lithuanian it has been replaced with a combined segmental/quantitative contrast, where the so-called circumflex tone corresponds to relatively shorter duration and, in the case of diphthongs, centralized quality in the first half. We discuss the implications of these findings for further typological work.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Baltic

Latvian

Lithuanian

prosody

word accent

Linguistics

lingvistik

baltiska språk

Baltic Languages

Phonetics

fonetik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)