Final lengthening and the prosodic hierarchy

Abstract

Segments undergo phonetic lengthening both utterance-finally and in certain medial contexts, characterized informally as “word-final” or “phrase-final.” No complete account exists of what these contexts are, or how they vary in the degree of lengthening induced. In phonology, prosodic hierarchy theory (Selkirk, 1980) posits that syntactic structure is reparsed into a hierarchy of nested levels of phonological phrasing. The theory is based on phonological rules that apply only when all segments involved occur within a single phrase of a particular size. The theory suggests a general account of final lengthening: The higher the level of a phrase on the prosodic hierarchy, the more final lengthening it receives. This hypothesis is compatible with the final lengthening rules proposed by Allen et al. (1987). The experiment described here used the method of Beckman and Edwards (forthcoming) to test the hypothesis further. Sentences were recorded in which the words hate, incompetence, and hating competence were divided across clitic group, phonological phrase, and intonational phrase boundaries. The prediction is that hate and hating should show increased final lengthening across the three contexts. Pilot results agree roughly with the predictions of the theory.