Swedish Word Accents

"Swedish words are assigned one of two possible melodic contours. These have traditionally been called accent 1 and 2. ""It has been demonstrated... that the distinction between Accent 1 and Accent 2 is in the timing of a HL pattern relative to the stressed syllable"" (Bailey 1990). For tone alignment, Bailey purposes a feature DP (delayed peak), which serves as phonological opposition and alignment specification (1990) as follows:$\eqalign{&\rm\lbrack-delayed peak\rbrack aligns with the stressed syllable\cr&\rm\lbrack+delayed peak\rbrack aligns with the post stress syllable\cr}$Dialects of Swedish are divided into two main classes, the High dialects and the Low dialects. For the minimal pair anden 'the duck' and anden 'the spirit', Bailey gives the following surface representation for H dialects:(UNFORMATTED TABLE OR EQUATION FOLLOWS)$$\vbox{\halign{#\hfil&&\quad#\hfil\cr&H L&1&\quad H L& 2\cr&\enspace -{\sc{DP}}&&+{\sc{DP}}\cr&$\mid\ /$&&$\quad \mid\enspace\mid$\cr&anden&`the duck'&\quad anden&`the spirit'\cr}}$$(TABLE/EQUATION ENDS)There have been two main ways of accounting for accent assignment. The Standard Solution assigned accent 1 to monosyllabic words and accent 2 to disyllabic ones. The Modified Standard Solution assigned accent 1 to monomorphemic words and accent 2 to plurimorphemic ones. Both analyses captured important generalizations about accent in Swedish, but involved complex rules and numerous exceptions. A situation where only general trends are observed is difficult to address with rules, and seems suited to a non-procedural approach where constraints determine the output. It is also clear that the distinction between accents is better expressed as a distinction in pitch domain. I assume that ""the domain is an explicit aspect of phonological structure, with the same status as structures for the syllable, foot, word etc."" (Cole and Kisseberth 1994). For H dialects, the question is, does the domain extent over the stressed syllable or over the stressed and the post-stressed syllable?(UNFORMATTED TABLE OR EQUATION FOLLOWS)$$\vbox{\halign{#\hfil&&\quad#\hfil\cr&H L&accent 1&\quad H L&accent 2\cr&$\mid\enspace/$&&\quad$\mid\enspace\mid$\cr&\lbrack an\rbrack den&`the duck'&\quad\lbrack anden \rbrack&`the spirit'\cr}}$$(TABLE/EQUATION ENDS) An Optimal Domains Theory account of Swedish word accents provides a principled way of relating the general trends observed, it greatly reduces the number of exceptions, and makes the relationship between stress, morphology and pitch domain explicit."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Linguistics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Andreasson, Anne-Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kisseberth, Charles W.

• Language, Modern

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9737035

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82663