EFFECTS OF PROSODIC BOUNDARY VERSUS ACCENT IN THE ARTICULATION OF ENGLISH /æ/ IN #VC AND #CVC

Abstract

The current study investigates effects of prosodic boundary and accent on lip opening and tongue movement of English /æ / in ‘add’, ‘had’ and ‘pad’. Boundary-induced strengthening is found in both V-initial (#VC) and C-initial (#CVC) words, although different kinematic measures are influenced by the segmental contexts. ‘Had’ patterns better with phonetically similar ‘add’ (sharing no constriction at the supralaryngeal level) than with phonologically similar ‘pad’ (sharing a CV syllable structure). Accent-induced strengthening is found in more kinematic measures than the boundary effect. Results also support that accent and boundary effects are differentially encoded in speech planning, in such a way that the accent-induced strengthening is reflected in the tongue fronting and the boundary-induced strengthening in the tongue lowering.