The hierarchical structure of prominence

This project tests the hypothesis that prosodic prominence reflects a hierarchical structure that emerges from the interplay between word prosody, phrase-level prosody and information structure. The ultimate goal is to offer an integrated dynamical account of prosodic structure in which prominence and phrasing rise from a single system.

To-date, the following languages have been examined:  

  • Greek, a lexical stress language 
  • American English, a lexical stress language
  • Korean, a language without word prosody 
  • Japanese, a lexical pitch accent language 
  • Taiwan Mandarin, a lexical tone language (just added, stay tuned!)

Products:

We have also talked about this work here: