Articulatory modification of /m/ in the coda and the onset as a function of prosodic boundary strength and focus in Korean

Abstract

An articulatory study (using an Electromagnetic Articulography, EMA) was conducted to explore effects of prosodicboundary strength (Intonational Phrase/IP versus Word/Wd), and focus (Focused/accented, Neutral, Unfocused/unaccented) onthe kinematic realization of /m/ in the coda (...am#i...) and the onset (...a#mi...) conditions in Korean. (Here # refers to aprosodic boundary such as an IP or a Wd boundary). Several important points have emerged. First, the boundary effect on/m/s was most robustly observed in the temporal dimension in both the coda (IP-final) and the onset (IP-initial) conditions,generally in line with cross-linguistically observable boundary-related lengthening patterns. Crucially, however, in contrastwith boundary-related slowing-down effects that have been observed in English, both the IP-final and IP-initial temporalexpansions of Korean /m/s were not accompanied by an articulatory slowing down. They were, if anything, associated with afaster movement in the lip opening (release) phase (into the vowel). This suggests that the mechanisms underlyingboundary-related temporal expansions may differ between languages. Second, observed boundary-induced strengthening effects(both spatial and temporal expansions, especially on the IP-initial /m/s) were remarkably similar to prominence(focus)-induced strengthening effects, which is again counter to phrase-initial strengthening patterns observed in English inwhich boundary effects are dissociated from prominent effects. This suggests that initial syllables in Korean may be acommon focus for both boundary and prominence marking. These results, taken together, imply that the boundary-inducedstrengthening in Korean is different in nature from that in English, each being modulated by the individual language’sprosodic system. Third, the coda and the onset /m/s were found to be produced in a subtly but significantly different wayeven in a Wd boundary condition, a potentially neutralizing (resyllabification) context. This suggests that although the codamay be phonologically ‘resyllabified’ into the following syllable in a phrase-medial position, its underlying syllable affiliationis kinematically distinguished from the onset.