Journal article
Acoustic evidence for right-edge prominence in Nafsan
Rosemary Billington, Janet Fletcher, Nick Thieberger, Ben Volchok
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America | AIP Publishing LLC | Published : 2020
DOI: 10.1121/10.0000995
Abstract
Oceanic languages are often described as preferring primary stress on penultimate syllables, but detailed surveys show that many different types of prominence patterns have been reported across and within Oceanic language families. In some cases, these interact with segmental and phonotactic factors, such as syllable weight. The range of Oceanic prominence patterns is exemplified across Vanuatu, a linguistically diverse archipelago with over 130 languages. However, both impressionistic and instrumentally-based descriptions of prosodic patterns and their correlates are limited for languages of this region. This paper investigates prominence in Nafsan, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu for which ..
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Grants
Awarded by ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
Funding Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks to all the Nafsan speakers who have participated in and facilitated this and earlier work, in particular Gray Kaltapau, Lionel Emil, Michael Joseph, and Marinette Kalpram for their involvement in this study, and Lingkary Kalpram and Yvanna Ataurua for their assistance during fieldwork in Erakor. This research was conducted with support from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (Project ID No. CE140100041).