The nuclear accentual fall in the intonation of Standard German

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the F0 contours of nuclear falls in standard German and explore the consequences for autosegmental-metrical accounts of German intonation. Where the nuclear syllable is a considerable distance from the end of the phrase, one can observe two major stages in the F0 descent: a sharp fall followed by a plateau which extends up to the phrase boundary. The beginning of the plateau, which we refer to as the elbow, has been found in informal observations to be at variable distances from the peak.