Abstract
The assignment of stress when reading Greek can be based on lexical and orthographic information. One hundred and seventy seventh-grade children read lists of isolated words and pseudowords. A large proportion of stress assignment errors were made in pseudoword reading, especially on the items that do not follow the most frequent penultimate stress pattern. Analysis of text corpora indicates that ignoring written stress diacritics would result in less than 1% errors, without taking into account disambiguating effects of context. It is tentatively suggested that, in reading Greek, stress assignment is primarily lexical. The results are consistent with a hypothesis that the bisyllabic trochee is the default metrical frame in Greek.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
S. Bakamidis G. Carayannis (1987) ArticleTitle‘Phonemia’: A phoneme transcription system for speech synthesis in Modern Greek Speech Communication 6 159–169 Occurrence Handle10.1016/0167-6393(87)90038-0
E. Bates B. Wulfeck B. MacWhinney (1991) ArticleTitleCross-linguistic research in aphasia: An overview Brain and Language 41 123–148
C. Burani L. S. Arduino (2004) ArticleTitleStress regularity or consistency? Reading aloud Italian polysyllables with different stress patterns Brain and Language 90 318–325 Occurrence Handle10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00444-9
S. F. Cappa M. Nespor W. Ielasi A. Miozzo (1997) ArticleTitleThe representation of stress: Evidence from an aphasic patient Cognition 65 1–13 Occurrence Handle10.1016/S0010-0277(97)00024-3
L. Colombo (1992) ArticleTitleLexical stress and its interaction with frequency in word pronunciation Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 18 987–1003 Occurrence Handle10.1037/0096-1523.18.4.987
F. Dick E. Bates B. Wulfeck J. A. Utman N. Dronkers M. A. Gernsbacher (2001) ArticleTitleLanguage deficits, localization, and grammar: Evidence for a distributive model of language breakdown in aphasic patients and neurologically intact individuals Psychological Review 108 759–788 Occurrence Handle10.1037/0033-295X.108.4.759
A. Dominguez F. Cuetos (2001) Lexical stress in visual word recognition: contrastive valve in Spanish University of La Laguna, Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva Spain
L.G. Duncan P.H.K. Seymour (2003) ArticleTitleHow do children read multisyllabic words? Some preliminary observations Journal of Research in Reading 26 101–120 Occurrence Handle10.1111/1467-9817.00190
N. Gutiérrez Palma (2003) El acento léxico y su función en el reconocimiento de palabras escritas en adultos y en niños [Lexical stress and its role in written word recognition by adults and children] Universidad de Granada Spain
Gutiérrez Palma, N. (2004, June). Prosodic cues to visual word recognition by Spanish children. Paper presented at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Amsterdam.
Hatzigeorgiu, N., Gavrilidou, M., Piperidis, S., Carayannis, G., Papakostopoulou, A., Spiliotopoulou, A., Vacalopoulou, A., Labropoulou, P., Mantzari, E., Papageorgiou, H., & Demiros, I. (2000, 31 May-2 June). Design and implementation of the online ILSP corpus. In Proceedings of the second international conference of language resources and evaluation (LREC) (Vol. 3, pp. 1737–1740). Athens, Greece
H. Holton P. Mackridge I. Philippaki-Warburton (1997) Greek: A comprehensive grammar of the modern language Routledge London
I. Kappa (2002) ArticleTitleOn the acquisition of syllabic structure in Greek Journal of Greek Linguistics 3 1–52
M. Laganaro F. Vacheresse U. H. Frauenfelder (2002) ArticleTitleSelective impairment of lexical stress assignment in an Italian-speaking aphasic patient Brain and Language 81 601–609 Occurrence Handle10.1006/brln.2001.2550
Leal, F., & Suro, J. (2002, November). A phonological analysis of reading performance in two dyslexic children. Paper presented at the 53rd Annual Conference of the International Dyslexia Association, Atlanta, GA.
F. Leal J. Suro (2003) The phonological hypothesis of dyslexia: A constructive critique Universidad de Guadalajara Maxico
W. J. M. Levelt A. Roelofs A. S. Meyer (1999) ArticleTitleA theory of lexical access in speech production Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 1–75
A. Malikouti-Drachman (2002) ArticleTitleGreek phonology: A contemporary perspective Journal of Greek Linguistics 2 187–243
Malikouti-Drachman, A., & Drachman, G. (1989). To
[Stress in Greek]. Studies in Greek Linguistics, 9, 127–143.Maridaki-Kassotaki, A. (1998).
M
[Evaluation of the relationship between phonological working memory and reading ability in Greek-speaking children]. Psychologia, 5, 44–52.T. Nunes A. Roazzi L. L. Buarque (2003) ArticleTitleLearning to mark stress in written Portuguese Revue de Linguistique 22 99–108
Petrounias, E. V. (2002). N
[Modern Greek grammar and comparative analysis, Vol A: Phonetics and introduction to phonology]. Thessaloniki: Ziti.Protopapas, A., Skaloumbakas, C. (in press). Traditional and computer-based screening and diagnosis of reading disabilities in Greek. Journal of Learning Disabilities
K. Rastle M. Coltheart (2000) ArticleTitleLexical and nonlexical print-to-sound translation of disyllabic words and nonwords Journal of Memory and Language 42 342–364 Occurrence Handle10.1006/jmla.1999.2687
N. O. Schiller P. Fikkert C. C. Levelt (2004) ArticleTitleStress priming in picture naming: An SOA study Brain and Language 90 231–240 Occurrence Handle10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00436-X
Stathis, C. & Carayannis, G. (1999, October). E
[Enriching morphological dictionaries with terms and supporting term-intensive texts in error correction procedures]. In Praktika 2ou sinedriou “elliniki glossa kai orologia” (pp. 157–165). Athens, Greece
[Stress in Greek]. Studies in Greek Linguistics, 9, 127–143.
M
[Evaluation of the relationship between phonological working memory and reading ability in Greek-speaking children]. Psychologia, 5, 44–52.
[Modern Greek grammar and comparative analysis, Vol A: Phonetics and introduction to phonology]. Thessaloniki: Ziti.
[Enriching morphological dictionaries with terms and supporting term-intensive texts in error correction procedures]. In Praktika 2ou sinedriou “elliniki glossa kai orologia” (pp. 157–165). Athens, GreeceAuthor information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Protopapas, A. On the Use and Usefulness of Stress Diacritics in Reading Greek. Read Writ 19, 171–198 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-005-4023-z
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-005-4023-z