Acoustic correlates and perceptual cues of word and sentence stress: mainly English and Dutch

Vincent J. van Heuven

This is an abridged version of a tutorial on the (older) experimental literature on the acoustic correlates of, and their contribution to, human stress perception, mainly on the basis of research on English and Dutch. The emphasis is on establishing the relative importance of correlates amd cues. The conclusion is that a reliable acoustic correlate (e.g. peak intensity) is not necessarily a strong perceptual cue. Conversely, the strongest perceptual cue (i.e. pitch change) is acoustically an unreliable correlate.

Index Terms: word stress, sentence stress, acoustic correlate, perceptual cue

Cite as: Heuven, V.J.v. (2014) Acoustic correlates and perceptual cues of word and sentence stress: mainly English and Dutch. Proc. 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2014), 211-217

@inproceedings{heuven14_tal,
  author={Vincent J. van Heuven},
  title={{Acoustic correlates and perceptual cues of word and sentence stress: mainly English and Dutch}},
  year=2014,
  booktitle={Proc. 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2014)},
  pages={211--217}
}