Abstract

This paper presents an electropalatographic (EPG) and acoustic study of prosodic boundaries effect on the domain-initial segments in Standard Chinese. Two speech sounds, namely, the voiceless unaspirated alveolar stop /t/ and the high front vowel /i/, were studied to examine the domain-initial strengthening in both spatial and temporal dimensions. The articulatory and acoustic parameters of the speech sounds were compared in initial positions of five prosodic constituents in Standard Chinese, namely, a Syllable, a Foot, an Immediate Phrase, an Intonational Phrase, and an Utterance. The results show that: (1) the production of the domain-initial consonantal gesture was prosodically encoded. The linguopalatal contact and the seal duration varied as a function of the prosodic boundary strength. The linguopalatal contact was dependent on the seal duration in a nonlinear fashion. Of the acoustic properties of the domain-initial stop, the total voiceless interval and voicing during closure were found to be reliable acoustic correlates that mark the hierarchical structure of the prosody. (2) At the release moment of the domain-initial stop, no consistent pattern was found to support the domain-initial strengthening. The linguopalatal contact of the vowel immediately following the domain-initial consonant did not show a clear trend of domain-initial strengthening; however, the phonatory features of vowels were indicative of pitch reset at major prosodic boundaries. These indicate that the domain-initial strengthening is restricted on the segment immediately following the boundary. In conclusion Standard Chinese strengthens the phonetic features of the domain-initial segments as a function of boundary strength, which serves as an important way to mark prosodic structure in Standard Chinese.

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