Abstract
Oronyms are sets of words and phrases that contain the same phonemes but differ in word boundary (atop, a top). Past research established that domain-initial strengthening (DIS) affects segments at the beginning of prosodic domains. This research examines voice onset time and vowel length in English oronyms with the hope of finding a systematic strengthening of the target sounds word-initially. The word list consists of oronym pairs with the same phonemes and the same [vowel, voiceless stop, vowel] at the beginning of the oronym (e.g. atop/a top, attack/a tack). To elicit more natural-sounding tokens, participants created sentences with the target oronym at the beginning, or read already-prepared sentences. It is hypothesized that there will be a systematic strengthening of the initial segments (in the form of either a longer VOT or vowel length). This could mean speakers are fully aware of word boundaries and use DIS to help avoid lexical ambiguity when speaking.
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