Preboundary lengthening and boundary-related spatial expansion in Korean

Abstract

This EMA study examines kinematic characteristics of preboundary lengthening (PBL) in CV.CV and CV.CVC contexts in Korean. Almost all lip closing/opening gestures – both proximal and distal to the prosodic juncture and regardless of phonetic contents and information status of the word – showed preboundary lengthening although in a gradient fashion. The articulatory lengthening was largely accompanied by an increase in both displacement and peak velocity. There was a mutual dependence of displacement and peak velocity, but when the dependence was factored in, the boundary-related spatial expansion remained significant while the effect on peak velocity disappeared. The results thus characterize the preboundary effects in Korean as a kind of articulatory strengthening in both the spatial and temporal dimensions distributed over the entire word than being localized to the gestures near the prosodic juncture. Some implications for dynamical underpinnings of PBL will be discussed.