the point is that it's not a single uniform feature and should therefor not be summarized in one single term it's just a non linguistic definition that actually means something completely different in musical and psychological context what is described in melodic accent is actually called tonal word accent and this was first recorded in the s by the german linguist ernest a meyer in his two volume work die intonation den schwedischen the intonation of swedish and systematically described in eva g rding's the scandinavian word accents based mostly on meyer's material may utc