Abstract
This study explores the extent to which German word accent distribution is influenced by language contact with Italian. To this end, speakers from three populations with differing degrees of language contact were asked to pronounce artificial polysyllabic words: (a) monolingual German speakers, (b) German-dominant bilinguals from the South Tyrol, and (c) Italian-dominant bilinguals from the same language region. In that the choice of artificial words largely precludes speakers resorting to the idiosyncratic lexical information which can steer stress distribution in real words, the results reported here enable conclusions about the influence of the contact language on speakers' implicit word accent rules. The study demonstrates that the contact language exerts a systematic influence. Compared to the German monolinguals, bilingual participants produced distinctly fewer words with penultimate and distinctly more with antepenultimate stress, with the degree of shift in accenting behaviour dependent upon the individual degree of language contact. Taking word accent distribution in the relevant languages into account, the altered accenting behaviour intimates the effects of (gradual rather than categorical) hypercorrection.