The Realisation of Stress in Welsh English
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ICPhS XVII Regular Session Hong Kong, 17-21 August 2011 THE REALISATION OF STRESS IN WELSH ENGLISH Kelly Webb University of Bangor, UK [email protected] ABSTRACT Later studies [1] have shown that the realisation of stress in English is more complicated than just F0 Primary lexical stress is realised differently in movement and syllable duration. Amplitude can play English and Welsh. English lexical stress involves a more important role depending on how it is greater vowel duration in the associated syllable, measured, as can the location of the word in the whereas Welsh involves the shortening of the vowel sentence, i.e. if the word is in prenuclear, nuclear, or associated with the stressed syllable and the postnuclear position. lengthening of the immediately following consonant. It is certainly true that none of these features exist Some accounts have suggested that Welsh English in isolation, and that all play a part in the realisation also features this long post-stress consonant. and perception of lexical stress in English. However, This study examined the realisation of primary Cutler states that F0 movement and greater syllable lexical stress in Welsh English by comparing it to duration “are the most strongly related and the least Welsh and Standard Southern British English controversial” [4] (p.269), and it is the latter of these (SSBE). The results show that the long post-stress two which is of the greatest concern to this study (as consonant duration in Welsh English is similar to explained further below), particularly segment Welsh. duration within the stressed syllable. Keywords: prosody, stress, Welsh, English, bilingualism 1.2. Stress in Welsh Lexical stress in Welsh has not received as much 1. INTRODUCTION attention as stress in English, and though there is Stress in language is “the accentuation of syllables some very early acoustic work on the subject, only a within words or words within sentences” [4] (p.264). few studies have examined it experimentally [14, 15]. The former, referred to as lexical stress, is the focus Firstly, it must be made clear that the placement of this study. In particular, the acoustic realisation of of Welsh lexical stress is very regular - it almost lexical stress in Welsh and Welsh English will be always occurs on the penultimate syllable, with some examined. irregular exceptions usually due to borrowings. Evidence for the penultimate placement of stress is 1.1. Stress in English posited by Williams [15] as being “...that Welsh Stress has been well researched in English, and the speakers, and traditional grammar-books, agree that it general consensus is that the features that are most is. Also, in Welsh songs, the penult is the syllable important to its realisation are F0 movement, syllable that occurs on the beat of the music.” (p. 43). duration, and amplitude. Research by Fry [6, 7] The most comprehensive experimental research of studied the contrast between noun/verb pairs (such as lexical stress in Welsh is by Williams. One of her object/object) in order to examine stress in English. studies [15] involved recording a South Welsh Initially he found that stressed syllables had a higher speaker reading aloud a list of words and sentences. amplitude and longer syllable duration than These recordings were then played to two English unstressed syllables. Further perception experiments speakers, and to one Welsh speaker, and they had to showed that listeners judged syllable duration as identify which they thought was the stressed syllable. having a stronger effect than amplitude, but that the Unfortunately it is not specified from which region strongest effect was from F0 movement. the listeners came. She then examined the features of Later studies confirmed that the duration of the the syllables that were identified as stressed. The stressed vowel was longer in stressed syllables than features of the syllables that the English in unstressed. Liberman [13] showed that 66% of monolinguals selected were more often those with a stressed vowels were longer, whilst this was the case pitch change of greater than 10Hz, longer vowel 94% of the time in a study by McClean and Tiffany duration, and greater envelope amplitude within the [12]. vowel. The Welsh speaker on the other hand chose syllables that showed the opposite features - less than 2106 ICPhS XVII Regular Session Hong Kong, 17-21 August 2011 10Hz pitch change, shorter vowel duration, and lower 2. METHODS AND MATERIALS envelope amplitude within the vowel. Further analysis showed that amplitude and pitch 2.1. Participants were not reliable indicators of stress in Welsh, but The participants in the study consisted of two groups that segment length was significant. Williams then - a) SSBE speaking monolinguals; and b) showed that the duration of the stressed vowel was Welsh/English bilinguals. not statistically significant (though in earlier work The first group were five female undergraduate she does point out that the stressed vowel is often students studying at Bangor University. They were shorter than the unstressed vowel), and that the recruited via an advertisement on the university duration of the following (i.e. post-stress) consonant intranet page, and were required to fit the criteria of was significant - the mean duration of consonants in being between ages 18 and 26, having grown up in an unstressed and a stressed position were 81 msec southern England, not having a strong regional and 94 msec respectively. accent, and having little to no knowledge of Welsh. On the basis of these results Williams concluded The second group were six female students at a that the lengthened duration of the post-stress Welsh-medium high school in North Wales who consonant is the most important cue to stress in were selected by the deputy head of the school and fit Welsh. the criteria of having lived in the Caernarfon region of North Wales their whole lives, and being raised in 1.3. Stress in Welsh English a Welsh speaking household. This second group was As far as I am aware there is no published recorded speaking the English stimuli in an initial experimental work on lexical stress in Welsh English. session, and one week later they completed the same Some accounts based on impressionistic observations task using the Welsh stimuli. (see: [3]) report that it too features a lengthened post- stress consonant that is similar to Welsh rather than 1.1. Stimuli other varieties of English (which would more likely Two word lists were created for the stimuli, one in lengthen the stressed vowel). This is not surprising, English and the other in Welsh, a selection of which given that past studies have shown that a particular are presented in Table 1. The words were chosen as variety of English can share features with the pairs in which the initial syllable was the same or as language with which it is in contact. For example, in similar as possible in both English and Welsh, with respect to prosodic features, research has been the post-stress consonant being either /n/ or /s/. A conducted on Irish English and Irish Gaelic showing variety of different vowels occured in the stressed intonational similarities between the two languages, position. and that these features differ to other varieties of Irish Each word was inserted into the phrase: English and Gaelic in another region [5, 13]. This a) “Say [word] again” (English); or suggests the similarity is due to language contact, and so we would expect that Welsh English shares some b) “Dudwch [word] eto” (Welsh). features of Welsh. The phrases were read one at a time as they were presented on a computer monitor. 1.4. Aim of the study Table 1: An example of the word pairs used in the The aim of this study was to examine the realisation task. of lexical stress in Welsh English, in terms of English Welsh segment duration. This will not only add to past Cannon Canol comparative research on dialect prosody, such as [5, Panel Panad 8, 9, 10, 13], but will also serve as a description of Gossip Gosod Welsh and Welsh English prosody which may form Possum Posau the basis of future research into prosody in language contact and second language acquisition in Wales. 2.2. Data analysis I hypothesized that, perhaps due to a long history The participants were recorded on a digital recording of Welsh/English contact, the realisation of lexical device at 96kHz. The sound files were then annotated stress in Welsh English would have features in using specialised acoustic analysis software [2]. common with Welsh. In particular, the post-stress Firstly, the word boundaries were annotated (word consonant would not be significantly longer in initial plosives were measured from their release) and duration compared to Welsh, but would show a the word duration measured. Then the procedure was significant difference in duration compared to repeated for the stressed vowel and the post-stress Standard Southern British English (SSBE). 2107 ICPhS XVII Regular Session Hong Kong, 17-21 August 2011 consonant. The duration of the unstressed vowel was showed a significant difference [F(189,2) = 23.07, also measured in words that ended in a single p<.001]. Post hoc comparisons reveal that there is a consonant (eight words in the English stimuli, and six significant difference between the duration of post- words in the Welsh). The consonant /n/ was marked stress consonants of SSBE and Welsh English from the end of the F2 formant of the previous vowel (p<.001), and between SSBE and Welsh (p<.001), to the beginning of the F2 formant of the following but that there is no statistical significance between vowel. The consonant /s/ was marked from the the duration of Welsh English and Welsh post-stress beginning of alveolar frication to the beginning of the consonants (p=.098).