Lexicalization and prosodic structure of Thai compound words

Compound words have been shown to exhibit variability in prominence patterns, with some similar to syntactic phrases and others, monomorphemic words. This study examines the relationship between prosodic structure and degree of lexicalization and suggests that the variability of compound words results from prosodic changes during the diachronic process of lexicalization. The duration ratio and three quantitative lexicalization indicators–i.e., semantic compositionality rated by speakers, corpus frequency, and reaction time collected in a lexical decision task–were analyzed. Results showed significant correlation between degree of lexicalization and prominence of Thai compounds, both in acoustic characteristics and prosodic structure, supporting the hypothesis that the variability of compound word prominence can be accounted for by prosodic structure and lexicalization.