The role of metrical structure in prominence perception

Riccardo Orrico; Stella Gryllia; Na Hu; Amalia Arvaniti

doi:10.17469/O2112AISV000008

Authors

Riccardo Orrico Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Paesi Bassi https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9260-7210
Stella Gryllia Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Paesi Bassi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8930-5833
Na Hu Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Paesi Bassi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2941-2100
Amalia Arvaniti Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Paesi Bassi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1689-1931

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17469/O2112AISV000008

Keywords:

Prominence, Metrical structure, Greek, Rapid Prosody Transcription

Abstract

Despite the increased interest on prominence, there is still lack of consensus of what prominence is. A recent review (Ladd, Arvaniti, 2023) has pointed out that the work conducted so far has painted a contradictory picture: on the one hand, some studies report that prominence assessment changes as a function of acoustic properties of words, pointing to the interpretation of prominence as a universal phenomenon; other evidence, however, suggests that the role of prominence is determined by phonology, therefore languagespecific. We report a prominence study in Greek with the aim of testing the hypothesis that phonological factors linked to metrical strength trump acoustic salience in the assessment of prominence. The results met our predictions and revealed that accented words are more likely to be selected as prominence than unaccented words, regardless of their acoustic properties and, crucially, even when accented words are less salient than unaccented words.