Word stress and sentence prosody in Greek

Abstract

The present study concerns the prosodic structure of Greek as a function of word stress and focus as well as statement and yes/no question sentence type distinctions. It is argued that the word stress distinction has a local domain whereas focus, statement and question distinctions have a global domain. Word stress has a lengthening effect on all segmental constituents of the stressed syllable and especially on vowel in combination with an intensity increase whereas the tonal pattern is variable in accordance with the global context. The focus distinction has no lengthening effect locally and may show variable tonal patterns locally and globally depending on the global context. The statement and yes/no sentence type distinction has variable prosodic patterns locally and globally and shows multiple interactions with variable focus applications.