Syllable structure and tonal representation: revisiting focal Accent II in Swedish

This is a study of tonal representation as a function of syllable structure constituency in Swedish. The results of a production experiment indicate that the onset of the focal accent rise – which we suggest to be best represented by a bitonal LH command – is associated with the consonant onset of the postaccented syllable. Furthermore, a vowel insertion is favored in certain intervocalic consonant clusters. In light of these findings, as well a parallel study on Greek, we claim: (1) syllabification is a basic prerequisite condition in tonal analysis and intonation studies, (2) tonal targets may define syllable boundaries and hence syllabification and (3) different tonal targets may be associated with different syllable structure constituents in different languages.