Atelier de Phonologie - Giorgos Markopoulos

A probabilistic approach to Greek nominal stress 

Giorgos Markopoulos (University of the Aegean)

[The presentation is based on collaborative work within the project GRADIENCE: Modeling the limits of grammar: Integrating lexical frequency in a Gradient Harmonic model of lexical stress; Evidence from young and adult Greek speakers’ grammars (PI: Anthi Revithiadou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, https://gradience.lit.auth.gr).]

In Greek, stress may fall on any of the last three syllables of a word (ultimate/U, penultimate/PU, antepenultimate/APU). However, the probability of a certain syllable position receiving stress is not entirely unpredictable. Previous experimental studies on nominal stress (e.g., Apostolouda 2012, 2018; Revithiadou & Lengeris 2016) have revealed a general preference for PU stress as well as a strong correlation between specific nominal suffixes and stress patterns.

In this study, we present further experimental evidence indicating that the presence of certain Theme elements (i.e., noun class markers) may inhibit the emergence of default PU stress and significantly increase the probability of stress falling on APU. We account for these findings employing the framework of Gradient Harmonic Grammar (Smolensky & Goldrick 2016) and assuming that Theme elements carry an inherent APU stress property with various Activity Level values, i.e., various levels of strength. We also present a mathematical foundation for our analysis, which enables an accurate calculation of the Activity Level of this property based on the distribution of stress patterns in the lexicon.