Intonation of Finnish Verbs
Anja Arnhold, Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam / Department of Speech Sciences, University of Helsinki
Martti Vainio, Department of Speech Sciences, University of Helsinki
Antti Suni, Department of Speech Sciences, University of Helsinki
Juhani Järvikivi, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
A production experiment investigated the tonal shape of Finnish finite verbs in transitive sentences without narrow focus. Traditional descriptions of Finnish stating that non-focused finite verbs do not receive accents were only partly supported. Verbs were found to have a consistently smaller pitch range than words in other word classes, but their pitch contours were neither flat nor explainable by pure interpolation.