Abstract:

Boundary-adjacent acoustic lengthening is well explored, and the articulatory bases for this lengthening are becoming better understood. However, the temporal scope of boundary effects has not been examined in the articulatory domain. The few acoustic studies examining the distribution of lengthening indicate that boundary effects extend from one to three syllables leftward from the boundary, and that effects diminish as distance from the boundary decreases (Cambier-Langeveld, 1997; Shattuck-Hufnagel and Turk, 1998; Turk, 1999; Berkovits 1993a,b, 1994). This diminishment is predicted by the pi-gesture model of prosodic influence (Byrd and Saltzman, 2003). We present an experiment testing the leftward and rightward scope of articulatory lengthening. One condition (CV#C1VC2VC3V) tested the scope of effects after the boundary, and another (C3VC2VC1V#CV) the scope preceding the boundary (where # indicates an intonational phrase boundary) as compared to a no-boundary control. Movement-tracking (EMA) data allowed the evaluation of constriction formation and release duration, acceleration, and spatial magnitude. Further, FDA (functional data analysis) was used to examine continuous temporal warping properties. Results of both analyses indicate an asymmetrical distribution of boundary effects, in that leftward effects are shorter in scope than rightward effects, though effects in both directions exist around a phrase boundary. [Work supported by NIH.]