Perceptual evidence for F0 variability constraints of phrase-initial accents in Greek

The pitch or F0 contour is a carrier of multiple information, from segmental to intonational (i.e. grammatical and syntactic to semantic to pragmatic). In this paper it is investigated the relation of certain configurations of F0 to the structural organization of an utterance. First some analytical observations are made. Then, in order to verify our analytical observations we conducted an experiment to test their perceptual relevance. Specifically we examine F0 accent configurations on phrase initial positions. The two experiments conducted in order to determine whether the leading F0 peak in an intonation phrase is free to vary unconditionally or its variability is constrained by tonal configurations of adjacent phrases. The results showed that the perceived prominence of F0 over phrase-initial accents is linguistically controlled by sentence structure.