Article published in:
Approaches to Hungarian: Volume 14: Papers from the 2013 Piliscsaba Conference
Edited by Katalin É. Kiss, Balázs Surányi and Éva Dékány
[Approaches to Hungarian 14] 2015
► pp. 267–292

Acoustic properties of prominence in Hungarian and the Functional Load Hypothesis

| University of Delaware
The acoustic properties associated with prominence (e.g. duration, F0) may also serve for “phonemic” contrasts. The question is thus how speakers correctly interpret these properties. We address this question in terms of an extension of the Functional Load Hypothesis (FLH): given that vowel length is contrastive in Hungarian, the FLH predicts that duration will not be the main cue to prominence (i.e. stress or focus). Based on a large, systematically collected corpus, we demonstrate that this is, in fact, the case; the main cue for both is pitch (F0), though its characteristics are different in the two cases. We also demonstrate that the vowel duration contrast is still present in the synchronic structure of Hungarian.
Published online: 03 June 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.14.11vog
References
Adank, Patti, Roel Smits & Roeland van Hout
2004 A comparison of vowel normalization procedures for language variation research. Journal of Acoustical Society of America. 116 (5). 3099–3107. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Berinstein, Ava E
1979 A cross-linguistic study on the perception and production of stress. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics. 47. 1–59.Google Scholar
Blaho, Sylvia & Dániel Szeredi
2011 (The non-existence of) secondary stress in Hungarian. In Tibor Laczkó & Catherine. O. Ringen (eds.). Approaches to Hungarian 12, 39–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink
2005 Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. http://​www​.praat​.org/.
Chávez-Peón, Mario
2008 Phonetic cues to stress in a tonal language: Prosodic prominence in San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec. In Susie Jones (ed.). Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistics Accociation. http://​www​.chass​.utoronto​.ca​/~​-acl​/actes2008​/CLA2008​_Chávez​-Peón​.pdf.
2010 The interaction of metrical structure, tone, and phonation types in Quiaviní Zapotec. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia dissertation.Google Scholar
Genzel, Susanne, Shinichiro Ishihara & Balázs Surányi
To appear. The prosodic expression of focus, contrast and givenness: A production study of Hungarian. Lingua.
Hammond, Michael
1987 Hungarian cola. Phonology Yearbook 4. 267–269. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kálmán, László & Ádám Nádasdy
1994 [Cited in Blaho & Szeredi. 2011]. A hangsúly [Stress]. In Ferenc Kiefer (ed.) Strukturális magyar nyelvtan: fonológia [A structural grammar of Hungarian: phonology]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 393–467.Google Scholar
Kerek, Andrew
1971 Hungarian metric: some linguistic aspects of iambic verse. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.Google Scholar
Kornai, András & László Kálmán
1988 Hungarian sentence intonation. In Harry van der Hulst & Norval Smith (eds.), Autosegmental Studies on Pitch Accent. 183–195. Dordrecht: Foris. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lobanov, Boris M
1971 Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49. 606–608. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mády, Katalin
2010 Hungarian vowel quantity neutralisation as a potential social marker. Acta Linguistica Hungarica. 57(2-3). 67–188. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 Shortening of long high vowels in Hungarian: a perceptual loss? In Silvia Calamai, Chiara Celata & Luca Ciucci (eds.), Sociophonetics, at the crossroads of speech variation, processing and communication. Pisa, Italy: Edizioni della Normale. http://​edizioni​.sns​.it​/it​/testi​-online​/pdf​-scaricabile​.html. DOI: CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mády, Katalin & Felicitas Kleber
2010 Variation of pitch accent patterns in Hungarian. Paper presented at the 5th Speech Prosody Conference. Chicago, USA.
Mády, Katalin & Uwe D. Reichel
2007 Quantity distinction in the Hungarian vowel system – just theory or also reality? Proceedings of the 16th ICPhS . 1053–1056. Saarbrücken, Germany. http://​www​.icphs2007​.de/.
Mády, Katalin, Lasse Bombien & Uwe D. Reichel
2008 Is Hungarian losing the vowel quantity distinction? In Rudolph Sock, Susanne Fuchs & Yves Laprie (eds.) Proceedings of the 8th International Seminar on Speech Production. 449–452. France: INRIA. http://​issp2008​.loria​.fr​/proceedings​.html.Google Scholar
Magdics, Klára
1960 [Cited in Mády 2012]. A szóvégi magánhangzók rövidülése a köznyelvben [Shortening of word-final vowels in colloquial speech]. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 62. 301–324.Google Scholar
Potisuk, Siripong, Jackson Gandour & Mary Harper
1996 Acoustic correlates of stress in Thai. Phonetica 53. 200‐220.Google Scholar
Remijsen, Bert
2002 Lexically contrastive accent and lexical tone in Ma’ya. In Carlos Gussenhoven & Natasha Warner (eds.), Laboratory Phonology 7. 585–614. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Siptár, Péter & Miklós Törkenczy
2000 The Phonology of Hungarian. Oxford: University Press.Google Scholar
Surányi, Balázs, Shinichiro Ishihara & Fabian Schubö
2012 Syntax– prosody mapping, topic–comment structure and stress–focus correspondence in Hungarian. In Pilar Prieto & Gorka Elordieta (eds.) Prosody and Meaning. 35–71. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Szeredi, Dániel
2008 Centralized vowels in Hungarian. In László Kálmán (ed.), Papers from the Mókus Conference. 51–62. Budapest: Tinta Publishing House.Google Scholar
Szinnyei, Josef
1912 [Cited in Blaho & Szeredi. 2011]. Ungarische Sprachlehre [Hungarian Language Teaching]. Berlin: Göschen.Google Scholar
Varga, László
2000 [Cited in Blaho & Szeredi. 2011]. A magyar mellékhangsúly fonológiai státusáról [On the phonological status of the Hungarian secondary stress]. Magyar Nyelvőr 124. 99–108.Google Scholar
2002 Intonation and stress: evidence from Hungarian. Hempshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vogel, Irene, Angeliki Athanasopoulou & Nadya Pincus
Forthcoming. Prominence, contrast and the functional load hypothesis: an acoustic investigation. In Rob Goedemans, Jeffrey Heinz & Harry van der Hulst (eds.) Accent and Stress Cambridge University Press
Vogel, Irene & István Kenesei
1987 The interface between phonology and other components of grammar: the case of Hungarian. Phonology Yearbook 4. 243–263. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
White, Laurence & Katalin Mády
2008 The long and the short and the final: phonological vowel length and prosodic timing in Hungarian. In Plinio A. Barbosa, Sandra Madureira & César Reis (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Speech Prosody Conference . 363–366. Campinas, Brazil.
Winn, Matthew, Allison Blodgett, Jessica Bauman, Anita Bowles, Lykara Charters, Anton Rytting & Jessica Shamoo
2008 A comparison of native speaker and American adult learner Vietnamese lexical tones. CASL Technical Report. http://​www​.casl​.umd​.edu​/node​/605.
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

ATHANASOPOULOU, ANGELIKI, IRENE VOGEL & NADYA PINCUS
2021. Prosodic prominence in a stressless language: An acoustic investigation of Indonesian. Journal of Linguistics 57:4 ► pp. 695 ff. Crossref logo
Kallio, Heini, Antti Suni & Juraj Šimko
2021. Fluency-related Temporal Features and Syllable Prominence as Prosodic Proficiency Predictors for Learners of English with Different Language Backgrounds. Language and Speech ► pp. 002383092110401 ff. Crossref logo
Lunden, Anya, Jessica Campbell, Mark Hutchens & Nick Kalivoda
2017. Vowel-length contrasts and phonetic cues to stress: an investigation of their relation. Phonology 34:3 ► pp. 565 ff. Crossref logo
Surányi, Balázs & Gergő Turi
2018. Quantifier scope in sentence prosody?. Acta Linguistica Academica 65:2-3 ► pp. 385 ff. Crossref logo
Vogel, Irene
2020.  In Approaches to Hungarian [Approaches to Hungarian, 16], ► pp. 188 ff. Crossref logo
Vogel, Irene, Angeliki Athanasopoulou & Nadya Pincus
2017.  In Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXIX [Studies in Arabic Linguistics, 5], ► pp. 55 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 may 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.