15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
This study presents kinematic data for the vowel /i/ at several different
prosodic boundaries in French. It follows on from previous work presented
in Tabain (in press), where the vowel /a/ was shown to be highly affected
by the strength of the prosodic boundary.
Consistent with previous
data showing minimal contextual variability in the production of /i/,
our results show minimal effects of prosodic boundary strength on tongue
and jaw movement for /i/. However, durational data show the same pattern
as is observed for all other speech sounds. We suggest that since a
very precise production of /i/ is important for correct perception
of this vowel, the speaker is not free to mark the prosodic hierarchy
in terms of supralaryngeal articulation in the same way as it is marked
for /a/. For this reason we suggest that duration is still the primary
marker of prosodic boundaries in French.
Bibliographic reference. Tabain, Marija / Perrier, Pascal / Savariaux, Christophe (2003): "A kinematic study of prosodic boundary effects on /i/ articulation in French", In ICPhS-15, 2617-2620.