Preboundary lengthening and articulatory strengthening in Korean as an edge-prominence language

Abstract

Preboundary lengthening, a phenomenon observed in various languages, is examined here in Korean, an 'edge-prominence' language that uses phrasing to indicate prosodic groupings and prominence. It was hypothesized that preboundary lengthening in Korean would involve hyperarticulation, reflecting prominence in both spatial and temporal dimensions at the right edge of a phrase. Our measurements of preboundary lengthening, using labial closing and opening durations in both CVCV# and CVCVC# (where '#' = a prosodic boundary), revealed its leftward extension to the initial syllable in bisyllabic words, with the greatest temporal magnitude observed on the final syllable. Crucially, preboundary lengthening was found to be accompanied by a substantial increase in displacement and peak velocity, especially in gestures related to the final syllable. This observation indicates domain-final articulatory strengthening, a phenomenon, largely dovetailed with the notion of an edge-prominence language, and not typically observed in 'head-prominence' languages (e.g., English), where the stressed syllable serves as the locus of hyperarticulation. These results were compared in two different prominence conditions driven by information structure ('new' vs. 'given') and were discussed to understand the observed kinematic pattern in dynamical terms in the theoretical framework of the π-gesture model.