Using Rapid Prosody Transcription to probe little-known prosodic systems: The case of Papuan Malay

This paper shows how the Rapid Prosody Transcription method (RPT, cp. Cole & Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2016) can be utilized when investigating the prosodic systems of a little-described language. We report the results of a set of perception experiments on the prosody of Papuan Malay, which support the claim made in earlier (production) studies that Malayic varieties appear to lack stress (i.e., lexical stress as well as post-lexical pitch accents). We show that inter-rater agreement of speakers of Papuan Malay is much lower for prosodic prominences than for boundaries when rating their native language. However, they show higher agreement when asked to rate prominences in German. Most importantly, they seem to make use of the same acoustic cues as a German control group. We therefore conclude that while Papuan Malay indeed seems to lack post-lexical pitch accents, speakers of Papuan Malay appear to be able to perceive the accentual prominences characteristic of German.