pitch accent

noun

1. Also called: tonic accent. (in languages such as Ancient Greek or modern Swedish) an accent in which emphatic syllables are pronounced on a higher musical pitch relative to other syllables

Example Sentences

In aboriginal America also pitch accent is known to occur as a grammatical process.

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Modern Greek has changed from pitch to stress, the stress being generally laid upon the same syllable in modern as bore the pitch accent in ancient Greek.

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But this pitch accent, while alien to us, is not impossible of acquisition, and it is essential to any adequate rendering of any Latin writer, whether of prose or verse.

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The pitch accent of the Indo-European languages was originally free, i.e. might occur on any syllable of a word, and this condition of things is still found in the earliest Sanskrit literature.

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It is possible that sporadic changes of accent, as in the Gr. meter compared with the Sanskrit mata, is owing to the shifting of the pitch accent to the same syllable as the stress occupied.

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