A pilot study

acoustic and articulatory data on tonal alignment in Swedish word accents

Abstract

This pilot study compares the timing of articulatory gestures to the timing of the tonal contour in South Swedish Accent 1 and Accent 2. Acoustic and articulatory data were collected with an EMA (Carstens AG501). Variables included the tonal alignment of the high tone H and the following low tone L to the vowel onset, the syllable offset, as well as to the lip aperture and the tongue body. Acoustic results point towards different units as host for the accents: Accent 1 aligns with the vowel while Accent 2 aligns with the syllable. The articulatory data shows alignment to different gestures: a stable tonal alignment with the lip aperture in Accent 1, and a less stable alignment with the movement of the tongue body in Accent 2.