Articulatory strengthening at edges of prosodic domains

TLDR

The study proposes that articulatory strengthening at prosodic domain edges may explain previously observed supralaryngeal declination of consonants. The authors compared linguopalatal contact of consonants and vowels across four prosodic domains (phonological word, intermediate phrase, intonational phrase, utterance) using reiterant‑speech sentences read by three American English speakers. The results show that domain‑initial consonants and domain‑final vowels exhibit stronger articulatory contact, creating greater contrast at prosodic boundaries; this strengthening is cumulative with higher prosodic levels, varies across speakers, and is only weakly correlated with consonant duration.

Abstract

In this paper it is shown that at the edges of prosodic domains, initial consonant and final vowels have more extreme (less reduced) lingual articulations, which are called articulatory strengthening. Linguopalatal contact for consonants and vowels in different prosodic positions was compared, using reiterant-speech versions of sentences with a variety of phrasings read by three speakers of American English. Four prosodic domains were considered: the phonological word, the phonological (or intermediate) phrase, the intonational phrase, and the utterance. Domain-initial consonants show more linguopalatal contact than domain-medial or domain-final consonants, at three prosodic levels. Most vowels, on the other hand, show less linguopalatal contact in domain-final syllables compared to domain-initial and domain-medial. As a result, the articulatory difference between segments is greater around a prosodic boundary, increasing the articulatory contrast between consonant and vowels, and prosodic domains are marked at both edges. Furthermore, the consonant initial strengthening is generally cumulative, i.e., the higher the prosodic domain, the more linguopalatal contact the consonant has. However, speakers differed in how many and which levels were distinguished in this way. It is suggested that this initial strengthening could provide an alternative account for previously observed supralaryngeal declination of consonants. Acoustic duration of the consonants is also affected by prosodic position, and this lengthening is cumulative like linguopalatal contact, but the two measures are only weakly correlated.