Three experiments of pseudoword reading assessed whether stress assignment affects reading aloud at the level of articulation planning. In Experiment 1 (immediate reading) both stimulus length (in syllables) and stress type affected reading latency and accuracy. Italian pseudowords were named faster and more accurately when they were assigned stress on the antepenultimate rather than on the pen...

Most parsing algorithms require phrases that are to be combined to be either contiguous or marked as being ‘extraposed’. The assumption that phrases which are to be combined will be adjacent to one another supports rapid indexing mechanisms: the fact that in most languages items can turn up in unexpected locations cancels out much of the ensuing efficiency. The current paper shows how ‘out of p...

We report the results of a pilot study investigating the effect of 2 regional accents on stressed vowel duration according to word-position and syllable type in Central v. Northern accents of Standard Italian. While there is overall convergence, we also find significant regional differences in some contexts, i.e. closed syllables, and antepenultimate position. We then consider the implications ...

This work is couched in the Articulatory Phonology theoretical framework, and it discusses the possible role of speech rate on diachronic change from antepenultimate stress words to penultimate stress words. In this kind of change, there is deletion of the medial (or final) post-stressed vowel of the antepenultimate stress words. Our results suggest that speech rate can explain this historical ...