Effects of prosodic boundary and syllable structure on CV intergestural timing in Korean: An articulatory study

Abstract

This study investigated how the intergestural timing between the consonant and the vowel gestures are influenced by the prosodic boundary and the syllable structure in Korean using an EMA. The results revealed several important points. First, the timing between the consonant and the vowel gestures are more stable when the consonant is located in the onset position than in the coda position regardless of the size of the intervening prosodic boundary. This suggests that the gestural timing is lexically specified. The result is further supported by the gestural coupling structure model. Second, the timing between the consonant and the vowel gestures is more variable when there is a stronger intervening prosodic boundary between gestures. This result supports the bonding strength hypothesis (Browman and Goldstein, 2000). Third, in the cases where the prosodic boundary is located in front of the consonant and the vowel gestures, the intergestural timing becomes more stable at a stronger prosodic boundary than a weaker one. This suggests that such a stable gestural timing is another characteristic of domain-initial strengthening. In the case of the CV coordination, the consonant gesture and the vowel gesture were influenced by the effect of the prosodic boundary. However, not all the temporal intervals were influenced by it. The syllable structure factor influenced the CV coordination only when the prosodic boundary is an IP boundary. There was no influence of the syllable structure at a Wd boundary. At an IP boundary, the consonant is shifted to the left or the right, depending on the syllable structure suggesting that the consonant and the vowel gestures are independent from each other. However, the vowel gesture is also influenced by the location of the consonant. In sum, the consonant and the vowel gestures are not completely independent but influencing each other in some part.