Word stress and duration in Finnish

The paper summarises results of an investigation of the durational correlates of word stress in Finnish, to be reported in more detail elsewhere. It was observed that segments and syllables have a reliably longer duration when they occur within the domain of the word’s first two morae than when they occur outside this domain. The most conspicuous concomitant of primary stress is the durational variation of the second-syllable single vowel: if this vowel constitutes the word’s second mora, its duration is very much longer than otherwise. It was further observed that when a consonant constitutes the word’s second mora, the consonant is lengthened, but only if it is voiced. We wish to argue that the motivation for the second-mora lengthening is to provide room for the phonetic realisation of accentuation.