Perceptual Cues of Word Stress in Kannada

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relative importance of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration in signaling word stress. Five twoword phrases as uttered by a 25-year-old native female Kannada speaker with and without emphasis on the first word were recorded in to the computer memory. The fundamental frequency, intensity and duration of the stressed and the unstressed words were measured. Six experiments were conducted in which FO, intensity, duration, FO and intensity, FO and duration, FO, intensity and duration of the unstressed words were edited to correspond to that of the stressed word. A total of 63 synthetic tokens along with the original phrases with unstressed word were audio-recorded which formed the material. Ten female subjects were audio-presented with the material and were instructed to indicate when they perceived stress on the first word of each token.