The timing of prenuclear high accents in English

TLDR

English intonation peaks align with syllables in a highly context-dependent way, and accurately modeling this variation is crucial for theoretical insight and high-quality synthesis. The study investigates how prenuclear accent peaks align with their syllables. The authors recorded two speakers repeating a set of four first names and three surnames, measuring segmental durations and F0 peak positions in the first name. The study found that speaking rate and prosodic context differently affect peak alignment; lengthening a syllable by a boundary or stress clash causes the peak to shift earlier in the vowel, indicating that phonetic rules must incorporate upcoming prosodic context.

Abstract

In English, the alignment of intonation peaks with their syllables exhibits a great deal of contextually governed variation. Understanding this variation is of theoretical interest, and modeling it correctly is important for good quality intonation synthesis. An experimental study of the alignment of prenuclear accent peaks with their associated syllables will be described. Two speakers produced repetitions of names of the form “Ma Lemm,” “Mom LeMann,” “Mamalie Lemonick,” and “Mama Lemonick,” with all combinations of the four first names and three surnames. Segmental durations and the F0 peak location in the first name were measured. Results show that although both speaking rate and prosodic context affect syllable duration, they exert different influences on peak alignment. Specifically, when a syllable is lengthened by a word boundary (e.g., Ma Le Man versus Mama Lemm) or stress clash (e.g., Ma Lemm), the peak falls disproportionately earlier in the vowel. This seems to be related to the syllable-internal durational patterns. It is concluded that rules for generating phonetic details from phonological structure must access information about the upcoming prosodic context.