Prosodic domain effects on noninitial syllables

Abstract

Previous literature has documented strengthening of segments adjacent to prosodic domain boundaries. This strengthening might be expected to affect only the segment next to the boundary. Yet, Fougeron and Keating [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101, 3728–3740 (1997)] found that some noninitial vowels showed strengthening in a domain-initial syllable, as did some onset consonants in final syllables. To test whether effects of prosodic domain boundaries extend beyond the domain-adjacent syllable, consonant and vowel durations were measured for the second, stressed, syllable in the place names Apollo, Atami, and Acosta, comparing utterance-, intonation phrase- and word-initial position. Results for four female and one male speaker indicate that while there is rarely any effect on the consonant, the stressed vowel in the nonboundary adjacent syllable shows domain effects in more than half of the items tested, with longer durations in higher domains, particularly in Atami. These surprising nonlocal effects suggest that: (1) the place of articulation effect may be due to simple distance from the boundary, since [t]s were usually shorter than the other consonants; and (2) domain edge strengthening may involve a change in articulatory setting, the onset of which is controlled more carefully than the offset. [Work supported by NSF SBR9600930.]