More on domain‐final lengthening and foot‐level shortening in spoken English

Abstract

The stressed syllables of spoken English tend to be lengthened when they occur before major syntactic boundaries (domain‐final lengthening) and to be shortened when they are followed by unstressed syllables within the same metrical foot (foot‐level shortening). The nature of the interaction between these two factors has been investigated. A first study [B. Rakerd, W. Sennett, and C. A. Fowler, Phonetica 44, 147–155 (1987)] suggested that their effects are independent. In that study, the syllabic structure of metrical feet spanning word boundaries were manipulated, where those boundaries either coincided with noun‐phrase/verb‐phrase boundaries or did not, and we compared stressed syllable durations. A limitation on the comparison was that the phonetic details of the metrical feet of interest were matched but not held constant across syntactic conditions. In the present study, the procedure to control phonetic details throughout has been refined. With this modification, a significant interaction was observed between domain‐final lengthening and foot‐level shortening; specifically, it was found that the intervals between lengthenings delimited the domains over which substantial shortening could occur. The whole pattern of results will be discussed in light of current theories of foot‐level shortening.