Figuring out word stress & intonation

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silvercat
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Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by silvercat »

Anybody have any resources or advice on figuring out interesting word stress patterns and sentence intonation? Or some nice examples in natlangs or conlangs?

I have a language I'm trying to flesh out and I'd like to do something more interesting than 'stress is on the penultimate' syllable or whatever, but I having a hard time finding resources for ideas that are written at a beginner level.

As far as intonation, I could use some more examples aside from the Wikipedia article, which are fairly sparse.

Thanks
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by Pabappa »

all i know is that questions tend to have a rising tone, even in languages like Mandarin Chinese where tones are phonemic and tied to individual syllables. You may have come across this already, but i find it's interesting and may be something that a lot of conlangers are unaware of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intonatio ... in_Chinese
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Dormouse559
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by Dormouse559 »

silvercat wrote: 03 Dec 2020 22:19 Anybody have any resources or advice on figuring out interesting word stress patterns and sentence intonation? Or some nice examples in natlangs or conlangs?
The Conlangery podcast has a helpful episode on stress systems (link). Listened to it a few days ago myself. They also include quite a few resources in the show notes that may be of interest.
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by silvercat »

Dormouse559 wrote: 03 Dec 2020 22:30 The Conlangery podcast has a helpful episode on stress systems (link). Listened to it a few days ago myself. They also include quite a few resources in the show notes that may be of interest.
Of course they do - I should've checked there. I wish they had transcripts for more of their episodes since audio is difficult for me, but I understand the difficulty of doing them for a non-scripted show
my pronouns: they/them or e/em/eirs/emself
Main conlang: Ŋyjichɯn. Other conlangs: Tsɑkø (naming language), Ie, Tynthna, Maanxmuʃt, Ylialis
All my conlangs
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Dormouse559
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by Dormouse559 »

silvercat wrote: 04 Dec 2020 01:33Of course they do - I should've checked there. I wish they had transcripts for more of their episodes since audio is difficult for me, but I understand the difficulty of doing them for a non-scripted show
Ah, audio can be an issue. Well, George is gradually getting transcripts made for the back catalog, but it looks like it'll be a while before he gets to 2016 and that episode.
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by silvercat »

Even if I don't re-listen to the whole episode, the show notes are usually super helpful.
my pronouns: they/them or e/em/eirs/emself
Main conlang: Ŋyjichɯn. Other conlangs: Tsɑkø (naming language), Ie, Tynthna, Maanxmuʃt, Ylialis
All my conlangs
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by Creyeditor »

silvercat wrote: 03 Dec 2020 22:19 Anybody have any resources or advice on figuring out interesting word stress patterns and sentence intonation? Or some nice examples in natlangs or conlangs?

I have a language I'm trying to flesh out and I'd like to do something more interesting than 'stress is on the penultimate' syllable or whatever, but I having a hard time finding resources for ideas that are written at a beginner level.

As far as intonation, I could use some more examples aside from the Wikipedia article, which are fairly sparse.

Thanks
Strangely enough, online resources on intonation are sometimes pretty good. If you try to find resources on the ToBI notation system (or its variant for your native language), you will probably encounter some helpful material. Sometimes looking at our native language already gives interesting ideas. There is a paper by Hayes and Lahiri (1991) on Bengali Intonation which is really a bit more advanced, but it is worth the effort if you ask me. I don't think there are any easy to read books on the typology of intonation at a larger scale.

The only large typological online database on word stress (stresstyp2) on the other hand is really not for any kind of beginner, IMHO. The corresponding book series is pretty good though, if you can get your hands on a pdf.
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by silvercat »

Creyeditor wrote: 04 Dec 2020 08:07 Strangely enough, online resources on intonation are sometimes pretty good. If you try to find resources on the ToBI notation system (or its variant for your native language), you will probably encounter some helpful material. Sometimes looking at our native language already gives interesting ideas.
Thanks. English is my native language and while I've studied some more, I'm sadly not even vaguely fluent in any of them. The joys of American public education...
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by Creyeditor »

Have you checked th Wikipedia entry on ToBi? I think that is a good start before googling specific terms.
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Re: Figuring out word stress & intonation

Post by silvercat »

Creyeditor wrote: 04 Dec 2020 17:12 Have you checked th Wikipedia entry on ToBi? I think that is a good start before googling specific terms.
I hadn't previously known the term, so no I hadn't. Thank you
my pronouns: they/them or e/em/eirs/emself
Main conlang: Ŋyjichɯn. Other conlangs: Tsɑkø (naming language), Ie, Tynthna, Maanxmuʃt, Ylialis
All my conlangs
Conlanging blog posts
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