Journal of Phonetics 74 (2019) 55–74 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Phonetics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/Phonetics Research Article Acoustic correlates of word stress in Papuan Malay Constantijn Kaland Institute of Linguistics, University of Cologne, Germany article info abstract Article history: The current study investigates acoustic correlates of word stress in Papuan Malay. This language is claimed to Received 26 April 2018 exhibit word stress, although empirical evidence is lacking. Moreover, related languages have been shown not Received in revised form 12 February 2019 to have stress, counter to earlier claims. Studies on stress in Austronesian languages have furthermore struggled Accepted 20 February 2019 to separate phrase level intonation phenomena from word level stress. The current study investigates a set of twelve potential acoustic correlates of stress, covering spectral, temporal and amplitudinal aspects of the speech Keywords: signal. The measurements are taken from spontaneous Papuan Malay narratives. A subsequent comprehensive Word stress acoustic analysis was carried out and designed to avoid common pitfalls in the study of word stress. Results indi- Acoustic correlates cate that measures of duration, formant displacement and spectral tilt provide consistent evidence for the produc- Papuan Malay tion of word stress in Papuan Malay. Prosody Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction by the (mostly Western) background of the authors (Himmelmann, 2018). In fact, recent work on Ambonese Malay Papuan Malay is considered a Trade Malay variety, spoken did not find acoustic evidence for word stress, counter to ear- in the Indonesian provinces Papua and Papua Barat. Other lier claims (Maskikit-Essed & Gussenhoven, 2016). Studies on Trade Malay varieties include Ambonic (Ambonese, Banda), varieties of Indonesian indicated that stress, if present at all, Kupang, Larantuka and Manadoic (Manado, North Moluccan), has a different status in the prosody compared to well- see Paauw (2008) for a comparative overview. The relatively studied languages such as English. The current study on word little research that has been carried out on these languages stress correlates in Papuan Malay provides a necessary consists mostly of descriptive grammars, with little to no atten- empirical investigation. In addition, it sheds light on an under- tion paid to prosody. Most of the Trade Malay varieties are researched language with potential implications for the study claimed to have word level stress. In some varieties stress of prosody in related languages. occurs at variable locations and might be phonemic (i.e. the The current study investigates to what extent acoustic cor- sole distinction between two otherwise identical words), while relates support earlier claims on the existence of word stress in others the stress location is rather fixed and non- in Papuan Malay (Kluge, 2017). Crucially, acoustic measures phonemic. In the current study, both types are henceforth from all aspects of the speech signal are taken into account; referred to as (word) stress; i.e. the single acoustically most broadly categorised as either spectral, temporal or amplitudi- prominent syllable in a word. The goal of the present study is nal. Spectral measures are defined as correlates that relate to investigate whether there is acoustic evidence for word to frequency aspects of the signal, such as pitch and formants. stress patterns in Papuan Malay. The communicative function Temporal aspects relate to the duration of speech. Amplitudi- of potential word stress patterns is beyond the scope of the nal measures in this study represent the acoustic power in current study, although some discussion is provided in the final (parts of) the speech signal, such as intensity and spectral tilt. section. Furthermore, possible interference of phrase intonation phe- As the majority of the stress claims for Trade Malay varieties nomena is avoided in the current study. This is done both by have remained without empirical support, it has been ques- focusing on a specific subset of the available data as well as tioned to what extent prosodic descriptions were influenced by the calculation of relative acoustic measures. In this way, pitfalls of earlier work are avoided and the results constitute E-mail address: [email protected] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2019.02.003 0095-4470/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 56 C. Kaland / Journal of Phonetics 74 (2019) 55–74 more robust evidence concerning the existence of word stress ‘be swollen’,[ˈe.nak̚] ‘be pleasant’ and [e.ˈnam] ‘six’, and in Papuan Malay. [ˈme.maN] ‘indeed’ and [me.ˈnaN] ‘to win’. Also in older and In the next (sub)sections an overview is given of word stress smaller descriptions of Papuan Malay exist, word stress has claims in all Trade Malay varieties (Section 1.1). Thereafter, been undisputedly assumed to occur regularly on the penulti- studies on word stress in Indonesian, a closely related lan- mate syllable (e.g. Donohue & Sawaki, 2007). As for phrase guage, are discussed (Section 1.2). Furthermore, an overview prosody, the few studies available suggest that marking of of common acoustic correlates found crosslinguistically is information structure using pitch movements (i.e. pitch given in Section 1.3 and the methodological concerns in previ- accents) is limited to phrase boundaries in Papuan Malay ous work on word stress are listed in Section 1.4. Finally, Sec- (Kaland & Himmelmann, 2019; Riesberg, Kalbertodt, tion 1.5 states the research questions. Baumann, & Himmelmann, 2018). 1.1. Stress in Trade Malay 1.1.2. Ambonese Malay In a description of Ambonese Malay, Van Minde (1997) In this section, all Trade Malay varieties distinguished in assumed irregular word stress. No indications are given about Paauw (2008) are discussed to the extent that word stress the (default) location of word stress and, crucially, no report on claims have been made. Phrase level prosody is discussed the existence of schwa is provided (Paauw, 2008). The main to a limited extent, focusing mainly on its relation to word level reason for irregularity is the phonemic nature of stress; hence phenomena. Table 1 gives a summary of the aspects of the lit- the minimal pair /ˈba.rat/ ‘west’ and /ba.ˈrat/ ‘heavy’. However, a erature on Trade Malay, which are most relevant to the current re-evaluation and acoustic measurements were carried out on study. These include the position of word stress, whether it is read speech samples from four speakers (Maskikit-Essed & phonemic, whether acoustic measures were carried out, Gussenhoven, 2016). The samples were comparable to the whether the collected samples consisted of free speech (e.g. ones in Van Minde (1997) and led to the conclusion that word spontaneous unscripted) or constrained speech (due to script- stress does not exist in Ambonese Malay. The vowel /a/ that ing or prompting) and the context in which the samples occurs in syllables described as unstressed by Van Minde appeared (isolation, phrase-medial, phrase-final or (1997) was seen as a different phoneme (a-caduc)in uncontrolled) Maskikit-Essed and Gussenhoven (2016) on the basis of its distinct spectral characteristics. In addition to the reanalysis 1.1.1. Papuan Malay of the phoneme inventory, Maskikit-Essed and Gussenhoven Kluge (2017) carried out extensive fieldwork on 44 speak- (2016) did not find reliable acoustic evidence for stress in dura- ers, predominantly from the Sarmi region in the Papua pro- tion, F0 peak alignment and spectral tilt for the examples pro- vince. Observations based on a list of 1116 words consisting vided in Van Minde (1997). Furthermore, no support was found of Papuan Malay roots revealed that word stress is located for the use of pitch accents in this language. on the penultimate syllable in 90% of the cases. The remaining 10% show stress on the ultimate syllable. Many of the cases in 1.1.3. Kupang Malay which stress is located on the ultimate syllable, the penultimate Limited work has been carried out on Kupang Malay. Claims syllable contains the vowel /e/. It cannot be concluded that /e/ on stress were made by Steinhauer (1983) on the basis of one rejects word stress, as 7% of the words with penultimate stress speaker (the author’s wife) and no acoustic investigation. It contains /e/(Kluge, 2017, p. 96). The other reported Papuan was assumed that word stress falls on the penultimate syllable Malay vowels are /i/, /a/, /ɔ/ and /u/. Although the observations unless it contains schwa or a central, mid-low and unrounded in Kluge (2017) are mainly based on the author’s auditory vowel. However, schwa did not appear in the vowel inventory impressions, a preliminary acoustic analysis of spectral tilt as in a Kupang Malay dictionary by Jacob and Grimes (2003).It correlate of word stress confirmed the stress claims to a large has not been investigated what this means for the analysis extent (Kaland, 2018). Furthermore, no minimal stress pairs of word stress placement in Kupang. are available in the word lists in Kluge (2017). It deserves to be noted that near-minimal stress pairs tend to consist of /e/ 1.1.4. Larantuka Malay in the penultimate syllable, for example: [ˈbe.bas] ‘be free’ Word stress in Larantuka Malay was described in and [be.ˈban] ‘burden’,[ˈbeN.kɔk̞̚] ‘be crooked’ and [beN.ˈkak̚] Kumanireng (1993) and cited in Paauw (2008). Historically, Table 1 Overview of stress claims for native lexical roots in studies on Trade Malay varieties. For varieties not listed no stress claims have been made. Abbreviations: Penult/Ultimate/Irregular word stress; Free/Constrained speech samples in Isolated/Medial/Final/Uncontrolled (phrase) contexts; n.a. = information not available or not reported. Variety Source(s) Word stress position Phonemic Acoustic measures Sample Context FCI MFU Papuan Donohue and Sawaki (2007) P, alt. U n.a. No x x x x Kluge (2017) P, alt.