Grabe, E. (1998). Pitch accent realization in English and German. Journal of Phonetics, 26(2), 129–143.
Presentation: Sally
Summary: Belinda
This paper investigates how English and German differ in the realization of phrase-final rising and falling pitch accents. Previous studies showed that English compresses rises and falls, which means the contours are steeper in order to maintain the same endpoint in a shorter time. On the other hand, German truncates falling accents: the contour does not become steeper, it only ends earlier. For rising accents, the contours are compressed, just as in English. In the study, the author recruited two groups of speakers: German and English, and tested 3 sets of vowels, from short (e.g., English /ɪ/), middle (e.g., English /i/), to long (e.g., a two-syllable word sheafer). All of the test items were embedded in carrier phrases. Results showed that English compresses both falls and rises while German compresses rising accents but truncates falling accents. According to the author, truncation is a phonetic process instead of a phonological one out of three observations: 1. the gradient difference between Schiefer and Schief. The mean rate of F0 change in Schief is significantly slower than that in Schiefer, reflecting the absence of compression. 2. the shape of German falls in F0. The level F0 observed for the realization of Schiff is the equivalent of the level or falling-rising section observed in falls on longer words. 3. The auditory realization of Schiff is always falling. For native listeners, this word has a falling pitch, regardless of whether the F0 is actually falling. For the asymmetrical results for German, the author explained it with the AM framework. Falls are represented as consisting of two tonal specifications (H* + L 0%) when rises consisted of three (L* + H H%). Therefore, the author suggested the asymmetrical findings of rises and falls parallel the asymmetry in the boundary specifications. Truncation and compression effects in German may be sensitive to the tonal specification of phrase boundaries.
