The production of lexical tone in Croatian Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie im Fachbereich Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität zu Frankfurt am Main vorgelegt von Jevgenij Zintchenko Jurlina aus Kiew 2018 (Einreichungsjahr) 2019 (Erscheinungsjahr) 1. Gutacher: Prof. Dr. Henning Reetz 2. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Sven Grawunder Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 01.11.2018 ABSTRACT Jevgenij Zintchenko Jurlina: The production of lexical tone in Croatian (Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Henning Reetz and Prof. Dr. Sven Grawunder) This dissertation is an investigation of pitch accent, or lexical tone, in standard Croatian. The first chapter presents an in-depth overview of the history of the Croatian language, its relationship to Serbo-Croatian, its dialect groups and pronunciation variants, and general phonology. The second chapter explains the difference between various types of prosodic prominence and describes systems of pitch accent in various languages from different parts of the world: Yucatec Maya, Lithuanian and Limburgian. Following is a detailed account of the history of tone in Serbo-Croatian and Croatian, the specifics of its tonal system, intonational phonology and finally, a review of the most prominent phonetic investigations of tone in that language. The focal point of this dissertation is a production experiment, in which ten native speakers of Croatian from the region of Slavonia were recorded. The material recorded included a diverse selection of monosyllabic, bisyllabic, trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic words, containing all four accents of standard Croatian: short falling, long falling, short rising and long rising. Each target word was spoken in initial, medial and final positions of natural Croatian sentences. This research fills several gaps in the existing literature. Namely, the production of tone was investigated in words with a syllabic /r̩ /, in pretonal syllables and in non-initial context. Acoustic parameters measured included duration, F0 in every 10% of the nucleus duration, overall pitch, pitch range and pitch peak alignment. Results showed that differences between falling and rising accents in Croatian are produced mainly with tonal parameters and that the most salient features were pitch peak alignment and overall pitch. The difference between long and short accents was primarily durational and optionally tonal. Words produced in initial and medial sentence positions had a rising contour in their accented syllable, while in the final, segments were usually falling. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to use this opportunity to thank all the wonderful people who’ve helped me so much on this long path. First of all, I am immensely grateful to my best friend and best man, Marko Radanović. Without him, none of this would have happened and I wouldn’t have had a second person to be grateful to. Kume, ti si meni Tito! The second person, who deserves no less gratitude, is my wife, Ivana. Thank you so much for all your help and patience. It wasn’t easy, but it’s over now. Volim te! A special thanks goes to my in-laws in Čačinci: Vlado, Đurđa and Marija Jurlina. Together with my friends Neno Radanović and Milenko Jorgić, they’ve kept me well-informed as well as highly entertained by their endless stories of language in the Slavonian countryside. Although not actively involved in this dissertation, I am, as always, most thankful to my parents Sergey and Inna Zintchenko, as well as to both my brothers, Nicky and Daniel, for all their love and support throughout the years. Я вас люблю, родные! A great thanks goes to my supervisors, Henning Reetz and Sven Grawunder, for all their guidance, help and statistical advice. And last but not least, thank you to Matej Pofuk and Evaldas Švageris for all their helpful and insightful comments! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables v List of Figures viii List of Abbreviations xi 1. Introduction 1 1.1 General Description of Croatian 5 1.1.1 Modern Croatian and Serbo-Croatian 5 1.1.2 The Phonemic Inventory 7 1.1.3 Dialect Groups 9 1.1.4 Pronunciation Variants 17 1.1.5 The Eastern Herzegovinian Dialect 19 1.1.6 Outline of Dissertation 23 2. Pitch Accent Systems in the Languages of the World and in Serbo-Croatian 24 2.1 Pitch Accent in Yucatec Maya 32 2.2 Pitch Accent in Lithuanian 38 2.3 Pitch Accent in Limburgian 44 2.4 Pitch Accent in Serbo-Croatian 49 2.4.1 Tonogenesis and History 49 2.4.2 The Accentual System of Standard Croatian 53 2.4.3 Phonetic Characteristics of Pitch Accent in Serbo-Croatian and Croatian 72 3. Methodology 96 3.1 Participants 96 3.2 Materials and Recording Procedures 97 3.3 Acoustic Measurements 101 4. Results of Production Experiment 105 4.1 Monosyllabic words 110 4.2 Bisyllabic Words 116 4.2.1 Syllabic /r̩ / Words 116 4.2.2 Combined Bisyllabic Words 129 4.3 Trisyllabic Words 144 4.3.1 3a Trisyllabic Words 144 4.3.2 3b Trisyllabic Words 162 4.4 Quadrisyllabic Words 177 4.4.1 4a Quadrisyllabic Words 177 4.4.2 4b Quadrisyllabic Words 189 5. Discussion and Conclusions 204 Appendix A: Participant Quastionnaire 212 Appendix B: Recorded Materials 214 Appendix C: Praat Script 231 Appendix D: Tables and Figures 233 References 274 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Consonant phonemes of standard Croatian 7 1.2 Vowel phonemes of standard Croatian 8 1.3 Illustrations of the pronunciation variations 18 2.1 The vocalic phonemes of Yucatec Maya 33 2.2 Pitch contours of grammatical voice categories 34 2.3 Accentual paradigms of Lithuanian 40 2.4 Accentual paradigm of hajdúkovac 60 2.5 Accentual paradigm of ȍblāk 60 2.6 Accentual paradigm of gláva 61 2.7 Accentual paradigm of bùnār 61 2.8 Major features and differences between the phonological models of Inkelas and Zec (1988) und Godjevac (2005) 71 2.9 Accentual patterns recorded by Pavle Ivić with number of tokens in parentheses 73 2.10 Pitch peaks in accented syllables of six accentual patterns in three sentential positions as produced by Pavle Ivić 77 2.11 Short dialogue written for eliciting different sentential environments 78 2.12 Mean duration in ms of accented and posttonic vowels and their proportion 85 2.13 Delta-Start and Delta-End values in Zintchenko Jurlina’s investigation 86 2.14 Minimum and maximum values (in Hz) and their position in the accented vowel (in % of the vowel’s duration) 86 2.15 Minimum and maximum values (in Hz) and their position in the posttonic vowel 87 2.16 Summary of acoustic and methodological parameters used in four investigations of lexical tone in Serbo-Croatian and Croatian 90 3.1 Data of speakers recorded in the production experiment 97 3.2 Summary of tonal patterns recorded 99 3.3 Accentual patterns grouped by number of syllables and accent with quantity of items 100 4.1 Independent variables examined and their corresponding levels 108 4.2 Mean, SD and median values of PPA% in initial syllabic /r̩ / words 108 4.3 Number of samples in measurement points in medial monosyllabic words 112 4.4 Number of samples in measurement points in final monosyllabic words 113 4.5 Mean pitch range values of monosyllabic words across sentence positions and accents 115 4.6 Mean duration values in ms of monosyllabic words across sentence positions and accents 116 4.7 Summary of the acoustic characteristics of falling accents in monosyllabic words 116 4.8 Number of samples in measurement points in initial syllabic /r̩ / words 119 4.9 Mean pitch range and PPA% values in initial syllabic /r̩ / words 120 4.10 Mean and SD values of duration in initial syllabic /r̩ / words 120 4.11 Number of samples in measurement points in medial syllabic /r̩ / words 122 4.12 Mean pitch range and PPA% values in medial syllabic /r̩ / words 122 v 4.13 Mean and SD values of duration in medial syllabic /r̩ / words 123 4.14 Number of samples in measurement points in final syllabic /r̩ / words 125 4.15 Mean pitch range and PPA% values in final syllabic /r̩ / words 125 4.16 Mean and SD values of duration in final syllabic /r̩ / words 126 4.17 Mean pitch range and PPA% values of accent types in syllabic /r̩ / words across sentence conditions 128 4.18 Mean and SD values of duration across accent types and sentence conditions in syllabic /r̩ / words 128 4.19 Summary of the acoustic characteristics of falling and rising accents in syllabic /r̩ / words 129 4.20 Number of samples in measurement points in initial bisyllabic words 132 4.21 Mean pitch range and PPA% values in initial bisyllabic words 132 4.22 Mean and SD values of duration across accents and patterns in initial bisyllabic words 133 4.23 Mean and SD values of duration in initial bisyllabic words 134 4.24 Number of samples in measurement points in medial bisyllabic words 135 4.25 Mean pitch range and PPA% values in medial bisyllabic words 136 4.26 Mean and SD values of duration across accents and patterns in medial bisyllabic words 137 4.27 Mean and SD values of duration in medial bisyllabic words 137 4.28 Number of samples in measurement points in final bisyllabic words 139 4.29 Mean pitch range and PPA% in final bisyllabic words 139 4.30 Mean and SD values of duration across accents and patterns in final bisyllabic words 140 4.31 Mean and SD values of duration in final bisyllabic words 141 4.32 Mean pitch range and PPA% values of accent types across sentence conditions in bisyllabic words 142 4.33 Mean and SD values of duration across accent types and sentence conditions in bisyllabic words 143 4.34 Summary of the acoustic characteristics of falling and rising accents in bisyllabic words 144 4.35 Number