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Abstract

Sentence stress is one of the most prominent elements of intonation. For the unmarked cases certain regularities can be observed as to its location, however, it has no single, established once-and-for-all site in an utterance, instead it is used to signify and signal additional information, such as thematic/rhematic structure, co-reference, contrast or emphasis. The fact is that within a linguistic unit containing more than one stressed syllable, these stresses will be perceived as being of different relative prominence. This difference is normally used to perform a number of varied linguistic function. Yet, it appears to be rarely consciously used. This feature of connected speech has been given relatively little attention, both within discussions of phonological systems of individual languages as well as in a contrastive or interactional perspective. The paper attempts to partially fi ll this gap by investigating the awareness of additional meanings carried by the marked/variable position of sentence stress. The investigations will focus on Polish speakers of English, as users of their native Polish language but also as competent users of English. The respondents are residents of Poland who have passed the extended level of the fi nal secondary school leaving examination in English at the minimum level of 80%. The observation of this preliminary study seems to be that Polish speakers modify their sentence stress patterns proportionally to the growing profi ciency and impact of other languages, with slightly different patterning than as predicted by, among others, the normative sources.

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Authors and Affiliations

Anita Buczek-Zawiła
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Abstract

Nasal consonants feature in phonological systems of both Polish and Welsh, yet, apparently, they are active in a different manner and to a different degree. The paper aims first at establishing the ‘players’ – the prototypical segments and their nonprototypical variants. The relevant inventories seem to be comparable, however, the contextually and non-contextually dependent realizations vary considerably in the two systems. Polish nasal consonants do not appear to have terribly complex phonology, their occurrence and phonotactics seems to be dictated through use (Bybee, 2001). Nasal segments in Welsh, on the other hand, are actively involved in the alternation of Initial Consonant Mutation, where they occur as strengthened equivalents of plosives through (possibly) assimilation (Buczek, 1995). It remains to be discovered whether nasals in general (and the so-called voiceless nasals in particular) are independent categories or rather, additionally they feature as nonprototypical variants of plosives. There is, indeed, substantial overlap here. Secondly, the paper looks at certain instances of what appears to be sonorant lenition in Welsh, where nasals [m] and [n] are broken into complex consonantal diphthongs [mh] and [nh] respectively (Pilch, 1975). In its entirety, this paper examines the two systems, hinting at the similarities and exploring the points of difference, especially in cases where the similar phonetic realizations possibly result from different categorical membership.

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Authors and Affiliations

Anita Buczek-Zawiła

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