Abstract
Sixteen “sentences” were composed by the binary inclusion or exclusion of each of the four unstressed (and parenthesized) syllables in the sentence: “Cheese(s) (a)bound(ed) (ab)out.” Each sentence was read five times, in an irregular order, by two speakers, and segment durations were measured from spectrograms. Among other things, the results show (1) that the duration of a stressed syllable is reduced by the addition, within the same word, of either a preceding or a following unstressed syllable, or both; and (2) that the duration of a stressed syllable may be affected by the addition of an unstressed syllable to other words, either preceding or following it in the phrase. Since the effects depend upon where the unstressed syllable is added, the latter result cannot be explained simply as proportional shortening tending to maintain total utterance duration. [This research was supported by NIH Grant No. NS 04332.]
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