Acoustic characterization of the Greek rhotic in clusters

This paper presents the results of a production experiment which examines the acoustic characteristics of the Greek rhotic sound in consonant clusters. The experimental results suggest that in this position the Greek rhotic has a different realization from the intervocalic rhotic: while in intervocalic position this sound is realized as a tap, in consonant clusters the tap closure is accompanied by a short vowellike transition between the tap closure and the second consonant of the cluster. The presence of the vowel-like transition was systematic, appearing in 79.5% of the tokens, and is discussed in reference to similar realizations found in many other languages

Intonation and pragmatic interpretation of negation in Greek

In this paper I present the intonation structure of different types of negative sentences in Greek, show how this intonation structure relates to information structure, and describe the contexts in which each of the different types of negative sentences occurs, that is, what sort of interpretation each of them receives. More specifically, I show how the sentence level tunes used in negative sentences are composed of parts such as the topic and focus, and how this articulation of intonation structure relates to the context of an utterance, thus connecting intonation and information structure. The findings reported in this paper are relevant to the larger field of the interpretation of prosody. There have been many unsuccessful attempts to give some truth-conditional interpretation to prosodic entities, such as topic and focus; however, no one meaning has been found to cover all the possible uses of prosodic focus. The pragmatic interpretation of prosody advocated in this paper overcomes such problems by connecting the interpretation of prosodic constituents with the context in which they are found, not with any inherent truth-conditional interpretation

Prosodic rhythm and the status of vowel reduction in Greek*

The present paper reports on a production experiment, in which the spectra and duration of the five Greek vowels were measured in trisyllabic and pentasyllabic words. The results suggest that vowel shortening and reduction in Greek vowels are extensive even in normal speech rates for all five vowels. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between the number of syllables in a word and the likelihood of shortening and reduction: greater tendency for shortening and reduction was found in longer words. Finally, the rhythmic category of Greek was assessed to fall between stress timed and syllable timed languages.

Drifting without an anchor: how pitch accents withstand vowel loss

We offer an analysis of the influence exerted by segmental rules on the suprasegmental structure in the dialect of Ipiros Greek (IG). In particular we investigated how vowel deletion (VD) affects the phonetic realization of the L*+H pitch accent. Our data empirically establish that the H tone aligns much earlier when VD applies than when it does not. Furthermore, we show that there is a phonological contrast between the nuclear L+H* and the prenuclear L*+H which hinges on early versus late H alignment respectively. We demonstrate that the contrast between the L*+H and the L+H* pitch accents is not compromised by the earlier alignment caused by VD. In other words, intonational contrasts are not endangered by fine phonetic alignment variability within the same category

The role of pragmatics and politeness in explaining prosodic variability

Twenty speakers (10F, 10M) took part in a discourse completion task (DCT) to examine effects of politeness and context on tunes used with wh-questions in Greek: they heard and saw on screen short scenarios ending in a wh-question. DCTs were controlled for power, solidarity, and context (with scenarios leading to the wh-questions being used either to request information or to indirectly make a statement). The results confirmed the role of context: the two context types led to the elicitation of distinct tunes, L*+H L- !H% for information-seeking questions, and L+H* L-L% for indirect statements, with lower scaling and later alignment of the accentual H in the former, and differences in final F0 consistent with a !H% and L% boundary tone respectively. In addition, questions after information contexts were shorter, but with a significantly longer final vowel. Politeness also affected duration, with conditions requiring a greater degree of politeness (the addressee being non-solidary and of different social status than the speaker) leading to lower speaking rate. The results indicate that tunes are associated with different durational profiles, which are also influenced by politeness. These results support recent studies showing that the study of intonation must include parameters beyond F0

Intonation of Greek in contact with Turkish: A diachronic study

Asia Minor Greek (AMG) speakers cohabited with Turkish speakers for eight hundred years until the 1923 Lausanne Convention, which forced a two-way mass population exchange between Turkey and Greece and severed their everyday contact. We compare the intonation of the continuation rise tune in the speech of first-generation AMG speakers born in Turkey with three subsequent generations born in Greece. We examine how long contact effects in intonation persist after contact has ceased, through comparison of the f0 patterns in four generations of AMG speakers with those of their Athenian Greek- and Turkish-speaking contemporaries. The speech of the first-generation of AMG speakers exhibits two patterns in the f0 curve shape and time alignment of the continuation rises, one Athenian-like and one Turkish-like. Over subsequent generations use of the latter diminishes, while the Athenian pattern becomes more frequent, indicating intergenerational change.Academy of Athens ; Economic and Social Research Counci

Prosody in contact: polar questions in Cypriot varieties of Greek and Turkish

Cypriot varieties of Greek (CYG) and Turkish (CYT) have been in close contact for many centuries, leading to mutual influence (e.g. lexical borrowings), despite belonging to different language families, and being typologically distinct. Little empirical research has been conducted on prosodic influence between contact languages. Some analyses of CYT polar questions report similarities with CYG, but do not give quantitative results. Using quantitative modelling of intonational contours, we compare CYG polar questions with those in CYT (geographically close), and with those in Athenian Greek (ATG) (phylogenetically close). We confirm previous research showing CYG questions are phonologically very similar to ATG, albeit with phonetic differences. We also find these patterns in CYG speakers’ L2 English. We then compare CYT questions with those in Istanbul Turkish (IST) and find, in contrast, both Greek-like variants (presumably due to contact with CYG), and more Turkish-like variants, with distribution likely conditioned by sociolinguistic factors

Dialectal effects on the perception of Greek vowels

This study examined cross-dialectal differences on the perception of Greek vowels. Speakers of Standard Modern Greek (SMG) and two dialectal areas (Crete, Kozani), all with five vowels in their systems, chose best exemplar locations (prototypes) for Greek vowels embedded in a carrier sentence spoken by a speaker of their dialect. The results showed that SMG, Cretan and Kozani vowels were well separated in the perceptual space. At the same time, there were dialect-induced differences in the positioning and distances between vowels as well as in the total space area covered by each dialect. The organisation of perceived vowel space therefore seems to be dialect-specific, a finding which is consistent with production studies examining the organisation of the acoustic vowel space

The prenuclear field matters: Questions and statements in standard modern Greek

Within the AM model of intonational phonology, nuclear rather than prenuclear pitch accents typically monopolize our interest as the purported pivots for meaning distinctions among utterances. This paper compares, through one production and two perception experiments, the prenuclear field in statements versus polar questions in Greek, which can be string identical, differing only in intonation. Systematic differences in the prenuclear pitch accents of these two utterance types were found in both their peak alignment and scaling. Moreover, identification and discrimination experiments showed that listeners were attuned to these differences. These results underline the importance of research on the phonetics and phonology of prenuclear pitch accents and their contribution to the meaning of utterances

The intonation and pragmatics of Greek wh-questions

We experimentally tested three hypotheses regarding the pragmatics of two tunes (one high-ending, one flat-ending) used with Greek wh-questions: (a) the high-ending tune is associated with information-seeking questions, while the flat-ending tune is also appropriate when wh-questions are not information-seeking in which case their function can instead be akin to that of a statement; (b) the high-ending tune is more polite, and (c) more appropriate for contexts leading to information-seeking questions. The wh-questions used as experimental stimuli were elicited from four speakers in contexts likely to lead to either information-seeking or non-information-seeking uses. The speakers produced distinct tunes in response to the contexts; acoustic analysis indicates these are best analysed as L*+H L-!H% (rising), and L+H* L-L% (flat). In a perception experiment where participants heard the questions out of context, they chose answers providing information significantly more frequently after high-ending than flat-ending questions, confirming hypothesis (a). In a second experiment testing hypotheses (b) and (c), participants evaluated wh-questions for appropriateness and politeness in information- and non-information-seeking contexts. High-ending questions were rated more appropriate in information-seeking contexts, and more polite independently of context relative to their flat-ending counterparts. Finally, two follow-up experiments showed that the interpretation of the two tunes was not affected by voice characteristics of individual speakers, and confirmed a participant preference for the high-ending tune. Overall, the results support our hypotheses and lead to a compositional analysis of the meaning of the two tunes, while also showing that intonational meaning is determined by both tune and pragmatic context