2025/10/01 by Matthew Gordon, Marija Tabain, Mate Kapović +2 · 1 voice
Computer Science · #Library Science and Information Systems
paper · doi:10.16995/labphon.17578
openalex publication_date 2025/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/08
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Tonal contrasts in most languages are restricted to relatively sonorous syllable types. Relatively rare are languages that permit contour tones on all syllables including less sonorous ones such as those containing a short vowel with an obstruent coda or no coda. There is a paucity of phonetic research, however, on such languages so it is unclear whether any temporal or scaling measures are implemented in order to facilitate the realization of tone on syllables poorly suited to supporting contours. We address this lacuna through an acoustic study of tone in Croatian (Split variety), which permits both falling and rising lexical pitch accents on all syllable types. We examine the timing of pitch peaks and troughs in recordings from 13 speakers who read a list of words varying in lexical pitch accent (rising or falling), vowel duration (long or short) and syllable type (open, closed-by-an-obstruent or closed-by-a-sonorant). We find that although the relative timing of pitch events varies according to lexical pitch accent (rising/falling), timing and scaling is remarkably stable across syllable types for a given accent, a result that confirms that Croatian (at least the Split variety) permits contour tones on syllable types less equipped to support them phonetically.