F0 and duration changes in unstressed vs. stressed syllables connected to postlexical stress and sentence type in Standard Lithuanian

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of F0 and duration changes in unstressed vs. stressed syllables con­nected to the postlexical stress and sentence type in Lithuanian. The aim of this analysis is to provide a systematic investigation on Lithuanian lexical stress by examining the F0 and duration differences between stressed and unstressed syllables in different sentence types and postlexical stress positions. The material consists of 540 audio-recorded phrases read by two Standard Lithuanian speakers – a male and a female. The results show that F0 does not consistently mark lexical stress in these two speakers’ data and it rather serves postlexical purposes. Significant differences between lexically stressed and unstressed syllables were found only in exclamations and questions when the target word was post­lexically stressed. Duration was found to be the marker of both lexical and postlexical stress. However, with regard to syllable duration, exclamations behave differently from both questions and statements.