The tonal patterns and the H peak alignment of nuclear vs. prenuclear pitch accent in two varieties of English: A preliminary report

Abstract

The current study investigated whether and how nuclear F0 peak alignment changes as a function of the incremental phonetic distance from the right edge of a monosyllabic and a bisyllabic target word. The results showed that it is the presence vs. absence of a post-nuclear syllable, not the increasing phonetic distance from the edge, that influences the F0 alignment; and that the tonal alignment difference due to tonal crowding interacts with the structural factor of the phonological word. This study also found no difference in F0 peak alignment between the prenuclear and the nuclear accent when the accented words were located in the same position, indicating no tonal crowding effect. But the two accent types (prenuclear vs. nuclear) differed in terms of the tonal makeup, with (L*+)H being more frequent in the prenuclear than in the nuclear accent. The results, however, showed a possible dialectal difference in both F0 peak alignment and tonal composition, so that nuclear F0 peak tended to come earlier for American than British English, and the pitch accent was marked by a (L*)+H tone more frequently in American than in British English.