A preliminary study of lexical pitch accents in the Split dialect of Croatian

Marija Tabain, Mate Kapović, Matthew Gordon, Adele Gregory, Richard Beare

Friday, December 16th, 2022, 3.45pm – 4.15pm

Abstract

The pitch accent system of the Split variety of Croatian exhibits an intermediate stage of the Neo-Štokavian retraction of stress, with the so-called “double accent” as the result. In this study, we examine acoustic data from eight female speakers of this variety. Although duration data point to stress on the initial syllable of the word – in line with the modern-day standard – energy data are more ambiguous. In addition, the rising lexical pitch accent is found to have a significant fall on the post-tonic syllable – a situation which suggests the separation of pitch from durational cues to stress.