Document Type

Article

Department/Program

Linguistics

Journal Title

Phonology

Pub Date

12-2017

Volume

34

Issue

3

First Page

565

Abstract

The functional load hypothesis of Berinstein (1979) put forward the idea that languages which use a suprasegmental property (duration, F0) contrastively will not use it to realise stress. The functional load hypothesis is often cited when stress correlates are discussed, both when it is observed that the language under discussion follows the hypothesis and when it fails to follow it. In the absence of a more wide-ranging assessment of how frequently languages do or do not conform to the functional load hypothesis, it is unknown whether it is an absolute, a strong tendency, a weak tendency or unsupported. The results from a database of reported stress correlates and use of contrastive duration for 140 languages are presented and discussed. No support for the functional load hypothesis is found.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675717000288

Publisher Statement

This document is a pre-print version of the article " Vowel-length contrasts and phonetic cues to stress: an investigation of their relation." The article is published in the journal Phonology 34:3 in 2017.

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