The main use of the term in this sense is in the specification of unmarked and marked tonicity. In English at least unmarked tonicity, apart from in a few exceptional grammatical structures, has the nucleus on the final lexical item in the word group. A possible feature of the difference between two accents of a language. Lexical incidence differences involve the occurrence of different phonemes in the same word in the two accents in question and do not necessarily have implications for the phonological systems of the two accents, nor for the phonetic realisation of the phonemes in question. An example of a lexical incidence difference between northern and southern accents of English involves words such as pass, laugh, bath.
Lexical stress See stress .
The use of pitch level or pitch configuration to distinguish one lexical item from another. Involving some part of the tongue as an articulator. The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is the tip of the tongue and the passive articulator is the upper lip. This type of articulation is very rare, but linguolabial stops, fricatives and nasals have been reported for the languages Vao and Tangoa, both spoken in Vanuatu.