Big accents in Stockholm Swedish: Nuclear accents, prenuclear accents, and initiality accents

Abstract

Stockholm Swedish has a distinction between so-called big accents and small accents (in addition to a lexical contrast between tone accent 1 and tone accent 2). The function and distribution of the big versus small accent has never been fully understood. West Germanic languages lack a corresponding distinction. While it is known that big accents appear on information-structural focus, this fact cannot account for all big accents, nor can it explain the existence of the big accent in relation to the domains of the prosodic hierarchy. In this article, the distribution of big accents in preverbal subjects is studied. A production study is presented where native speakers read sentences with preverbal subjects of four different lengths, with or without information-structural focus. Based on the results, it is argued that heads of prosodic phrases (φ) serve as hosts of big accents (one and only one big accent per φ). The rightmost big accent in the intonation phrase (ι) is referred to as the nuclear accent, and all other (non-rightmost) big accents are referred to as prenuclear accents. Heads of φ are aligned with the right edge of φ by default. However, the leftmost φ inside an ι may (non-obligatorily) be left-headed, causing a big accent to appear at the leftmost prosodic word (ω) of ι. Such left-aligned prenuclear accents are referred to as initiality accents. These assumptions regarding the big accent in Stockholm Swedish account for the large observed variation in terms of big accent distribution in the preverbal subjects.