This MA thesis looks at secondary stress in Slovenian from the perspective of general phonological theory. The key question is whether there is a difference between derived words and compounds with and without secondary stress. The results indicate that there are no statistically significant differences in the duration and formant frequencies of vowels with and secondary stress and the ones without. The property that distinguishes the vowels that supposedely have (secondary) stress is duration. I found that the average differences in vowel length indicate three groups: compounds, prefixed words, and compounds with a foreign root. I analyze these differences by positing different prosodic strucures, following Jurgec (2007). Compounds have secondary stress at the level of phonological phrase, whereas prefixed words have either secondary stress at the level of prosodic word or no secondary stress. This MA thesis looks at secondary stress in Slovenian from the perspective of general phonological theory. The key question is whether there is a difference between derived words and compounds with and without secondary stress. The results indicate that there are no statistically significant differences in the duration and formant frequencies of vowels with and secondary stress and the ones without. The property that distinguishes the vowels that supposedely have (secondary) stress is duration. I found that the average differences in vowel length indicate three groups: compounds, prefixed words, and compounds with a foreign root. I analyze these differences by positing different prosodic strucures, following Jurgec (2007). Compounds have secondary stress at the level of phonological phrase, whereas prefixed words have either secondary stress at the level of prosodic word or no secondary stress.
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