PHONETIC INTERPRETATION OF THE WORD ACCENT CONTRAST IN SWEDISH

This paper reports an experimental phonetic study of the acute and grave word accents in Central Standard Swedish. The hypothesis was that the fall in fundamental frequency (F-0) observed on the primary stressed syllable in grave words is a direct consequence of the word accent, while the corresponding fall in F-0 in acute words reflects sentence level intonation. Three male subjects read speech material designed to illustrate how these falls in F-0 are influenced by intonational context. The main finding was that the grave fall was substantial and consistent, whereas an acute fall appeared only in certain contexts. The results indicated that an F-0 fall is a positive acoustic-perceptual requirement for the grave accent, while the acute accent constitutes the unmarked member of the contrast, i.e., 'acute' equals 'non-grave'.