Additive effects of phrase boundary on english accented vowels

Eun Kyung Lee, Jennifer Cole, Heejin Kim

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper investigates cumulative effects of strengthening and lengthening on English vowels across two prominencebearing prosodic factors, phrasal accent and prosodic phrase boundary. F1, F2 and duration measures are compared across vowels in three prosodic contexts: ip-medial unaccented, ipmedial accented, and ip-final accented. The results show that for most vowels there is only one degree of vowel strengthening, conditioned by phrasal accent, without any additive strengthening effect of prosodic phrase boundary. Lengthening is observed in both accent and added phrase boundary conditions, and the effect is consistently cumulative for at least some vowels, suggesting a gradient increase of duration as a function of the strength of prosodic structure. This finding also provides compelling evidence that strengthening and lengthening effects are two independent mechanisms that serve to mark prosodically strong positions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalProceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody
StatePublished - 2006
Event3rd International Conference on Speech Prosody, SP 2006 - Dresden, Germany
Duration: May 2 2006May 5 2006

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Additive effects of phrase boundary on english accented vowels'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this