Acoustic correlates of word stress in German spontaneous speech

The acoustic properties of word stress have been explored in a number of studies. However, there is little research on German word stress, and even less on its realization in spontaneous speech. This paper tests whether parameters that have been found to implement word stress in mostly laboratory speech are also employed in a corpus of German spontaneous speech. Specifically, we consider spectral tilt, syllable duration and pitch. While the results for syllable duration conform with the prevalent finding that stressed syllables have a higher duration, we find no significant effect of pitch. In the case of spectral tilt however, we observe contradicting results, depending on the way we quantify tilt.