Danish speakers’ preference for stød in monomorphemic nonce words ending in -en , -er , or ‑ el

Abstract The prosodic phenomenon called stød in Danish is largely predictable from stress patterns. Words with stress on the ultimate syllable generally have stød, and words with stress on the penultimate syllable generally do not have stød (Grønnum 2005, Goldshtein 2023). According to Basbøll (2005), stød in monomorphemic words can be explained exclusively by the location of the stressed syllable. However, there are exceptions to this general pattern. For example, words with stress on the penultimate syllable ending in -en , -er , or -el often have stød. In this study, an experiment with a two-alternative forced-choice task is used to investigate speakers’ preference for stød in monomorphemic nonce words ending in -en , -er , or -el , compared to nonce words ending in -e. The results show that participants prefer stød more often in nonce words ending in -en , -er , or -el than in nonce words ending in -e , and this preference increases in the same direction as the distribution in the lexicon. The study therefore shows that stød is not exclusively conditioned by the location of the stressed syllable in monomorphemic words. Speakers’ generalizations for stød are more fine-grained, and they reflect statistical patterns in the lexicon.