Acoustic properties of word and phrasal prominence in Uzbek

Abstract

Based on a large-scale corpus of experimental data produced by 8 native speakers of Tashkent Uzbek, we assess the presence of canonical word-final stress in real words spoken in three dialogue types: without focus, with contrastive focus, and with new information focus on the target. The first context provides baseline information regarding the manifestation of stress, in the absence of additional focus properties. By comparing the latter two contexts with the former, we are also able to assess the acoustic manifestation of the two types of focus. The most noteworthy properties of the final syllable are its relatively long duration and sharp falling contour, potentially serving as the cues to lexical stress, and enhanced by both types of focus. Due to the word-final position of stress, however, the patterns we observe could also be consistent with boundary properties, a possibility we consider as well. In addition, we briefly compare the prosodic patterns we observe in Uzbek with similarly collected data in Turkish. We find that the prominence patterns in Uzbek, while not particularly strong, are nevertheless stronger than those in Turkish, and also exhibit crucial differences. Implications for Turkic prosody more generally are also suggested.