Effects of syllable onset on the timing of pitch accent in Belgrade Serbian

Abstract

In this paper, I present the results of an acoustic study on Serbian, a pitch-accent language with sonorant-sonorant onset clusters like /mr/ and /ml/. I show that peak timing in falling accents is not affected solely by syllable onset duration, as suggested by the segmental anchoring hypothesis, but rather is determined by an interaction between syllable onset complexity and syllable onset duration, indicating a gestural representation of tone.