Periodic energy mass on head and edge tones in Maltese wh-constructions

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the relation between tonal association and prosodic strength in different tone bearing positions in Maltese wh-words. In these words, tones are associated with the stressed syllable (head association) in indirect and quoted questions, but with the initial syllable (edge association) in direct questions. In a language that has pitch accents to cue prominence (a head prominence language according to Jun's typology), the initial syllable, if not stressed, would not typically cue prominence, but rather juncture. Using periodic energy mass as a measure of strength, and thus prominence, we found that mass enhancement is not conditioned by tonal association (either head or edge) but rather by the lexical stress. Whereas the present study shows that the word-initial H tone does not affect the relative prominence between the stressed syllable and the word-initial one, and thus does not cue prominence on the initial syllable, there is a potentially different prominence-cueing function of this early H peak. That is, for example a prominence cueing function at the word level (i.e., one which makes the entire word more prominent) driven by modality or pragmatic force.