Paroxytone and proparoxytone rules might be quite profitably dealt with at later stages.
A paroxytone structure has the primary stress on the penultimate syllable--like manner, indulgent, condemnation, etc.
An interesting aspect that emerges upon analyzing our results--see figure 4--is that there is an inverse correlation between presence and level in the case of oxytones, and a direct correlation in the case of paroxytones and proparoxytones.
In order to find out the phonological units that better account for the rising F0 trajectories in the two languages, I recorded one English and one Spanish native speaker producing 45 declarative sentences which contained words with different stress distributions (oxytones, paroxytones and proparoxytones) in prenuclear position.
In order to find out the phonological primes that account for prenuclear F0 rises, recordings were made of one English and one Spanish native speaker producing 45 declarative sentences which contained words with different stress distribution in prenuclear position: oxytones (words with stress on the final syllable and thus no postaccentual syllables within the word), paroxytones (words with stress on the penultimante syllable and thus one postaccentual syllable within the word) and proparoxytones (words with stress on the antepenultimate syllable and thus two postaccentual syllables within the word).
Similarly, if rising accents were compressed a more rapid rising in oxytones than in paroxytones or proparoxytones would be expected.
Since each sentence consisted of two prenuclear accents, 360 accents were analysed, namely 120 oxytones, 120 paroxytones and 120 proparoxytones.
Thus, F0 peaks are more displaced in paroxytones than in oxytones and even more displaced in proparoxytones than in paroxytones.
Since in English the H is clearly aligned within the accented syllable, the H distance to the word boundary is greater in paroxytones than in oxytones and even greater in proparoxytones than in paroxytones, as a result of the different number of postaccentual syllables within the word.
The status of L is investigated in words with different stress distributions (oxytones, paroxytones, and proparoxytones) in subject and verb focal positions.
In order to determine the status of L after the focal element in the two languages, focal words with different stress distributions were used, namely, oxytones (words with stress on the ultimate syllable), paroxytones (words with stress on the penultimate syllable), and proparoxytones (words with stress on the antepenultimate syllable).
For each focal domain (subject and verb), 12 words with a different stress pattern (oxytones, paroxytones and proparoxytones) were gathered.
Table 1 displays the mean values and standard deviations for the onvalley distance and the on-end distance in oxytones, paroxytones and proparoxytones, both in Catalan and in English.
Figures 4 and 5 plot the correlations between the on-end and the on-valley distances for nuclear oxytones, paroxytones and proparoxytones, both in subject and in verb positions for Catalan and English.
In order to confirm this possibility, we performed an analysis of variance on the on-valley measurements for the three groups of words (oxytones, paroxytones and proparoxytones) in English.
