The supraglottal articulation of prominence in English: Linguistic stress as localized hyperarticulation

TLDR

The study evaluates three stress models: jaw‑movement expansion, abstract articulatory‑scale expansion, and localized hyperarticulation. The authors analyze a corpus of x‑ray microbeam recordings of natural speech, controlling stress patterns and verifying them with intonational analysis, and discuss a hyperarticulation model of stress. The study finds that while jaw‑movement patterns resemble prior work, subjects employ distinct articulatory strategies, with jaw, lip, and tongue interactions varying individually, supporting an abstract articulatory‑goal framework and showing that stress influences non‑sonority distinctions such as vowel backness and consonant articulation.

Abstract

The results of an articulatory investigation of the supraglottal correlates of linguistic prominence in English, and a proposal of a unified description of linguistic stress are reported. Three models of stress are evaluated: that prominence expands jaw movement, that stress expands an abstract articulatory scale involving the opening and closing of the vocal tract, and that stress involves a localized shift toward hyperarticulate speech. A corpus of x-ray microbeam records of sensible speech is studied, within which the stress pattern is controlled and is checked by means of an intonational analysis. Jaw movement data yield similar results to earlier studies, but kinematic differences interpreted with reference to a gestural theory suggest that different subjects use different articulatory strategies to articulate stress contrasts. In addition, the jaw, lip, and tongue interact in the articulation of stress in subject dependent ways. Thus the articulation of stress should be formulated in terms of abstract articulatory goals, rather than in terms of individual articulator positioning. Finally, the data show that stress affects the articulation of nonsonority distinctions such as backness in vowels and point of articulation in consonants. A hyperarticulation model of stress is discussed in terms of these results.