15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15) Barcelona, Spain August 3-9, 2003

Stress Patterns of German Cardinal Numbers

Sarah M. Creer (1), Maria Wolters (2)

(1) University of Edinburgh, UK
(2) Rhetorical Systems, UK

The German cardinal numbers from 20 to 99 consist of two parts: a lexeme for the unit followed by a lexeme for the decade. Both parts may receive primary stress. Since numbers are very frequent in texts, it is important for a text-to-speech system to correctly predict the location of primary stress on a given number. Based on a production and a perception experiment, we suggest a simple, phonologically plausible algorithm for stress assignment: if a number is phrase-final, then primary stress falls on the decade, otherwise, it falls on the unit.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Creer, Sarah M. / Wolters, Maria (2003): "Stress patterns of German cardinal numbers", In ICPhS-15, 2099-2102.