Publications

The Effects of Prosody on Articulation in English

List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1. Background 1.2. Limitations of Previous Studies 1.3. Research Questions and Theoretical Background 1.3.1. Questions regarding articulation at domain-edges 1.3.2. Questions regarding strengthening and coarticulation 1.3.3. Questions Regarding Effects of Prosody on Kinematic Variations and Dynamical Accounts 1.3.3.1. Task dynamic model and dynamical parameters 1.3.3.2. Some previous studies 1.3.3.3. Stiffness and the p-gesture 1.3.4. Prosodic Organization 1.5. Outline of The Dissertation Chapter 2. Methods 2.1. Speech Material 2.2. Speakers 2.3. Procedures 2.4. Measurements 2.4.1. Measurements in Chapter 3: Maximum positions of the tongue, jaw, and lips. 2.4.2. Measurements in Chapter 4: Tongue position differences 2.4.3. Measurements in Chapter 5: Lip kinematics 2.4.4. Measurements in Chapter 6: Tongue kinematics 2.5. Prosodic Transcription 2.6. Statistics Chapter 3. Effects of Accent and Prosodic Boundary on Articulatory Maxima: Tongue, Jaw, and Lip 3.1. Hypotheses 3.2. Measurements and Statistics 3.3. Result 1: Articulatory Maxima in Preboundary Domain-final) Vowels (V1#) 3.3.1 Effect of Accent on V1 3.3.1.1. Accent effect on V1 maximum tongue position 3.3.1.2. Accent effect on V1 lip and jaw opening maxima 3.3.2. Effect of Boundary Type on V1 3.3.2.1. Boundary effect on V1 maximum tongue position 3.3.2.2. Boundary effect on V1 lip and jaw opening maxima 3.3.3. Effects of the neighboring vowel (V2) on V1 3.4. Result 2: Articulatory Maxima in Postboundary (domain-initial) Vowels (#CV2) 3.4.1. Effect of Accent on C2V2 3.4.1.1. Accent effect on CV2 maximum tongue position 3.4.1.2. Accent effect on V2 lip and jaw opening maxima 3.4.2. Effect of Boundary Type on C2V2 3.4.2.1. Boundary effect on C2V2 maximum tongue position 3.4.2.2. Boundary effect on V2 lip and jaw maxima 3.4.3. Effects of the neighboring vowel (V1) on V2 3.5. Summary & Discussion 3.5.1. Characteristics of Accent and Featural Enhancement 3.5.2. Asymmetry between domain-initial and domain-final articulations 3.5.3. Boundary-induced vs. Accent-induced Articulatory strengthening Chapter 4. Prosodically Conditioned V-to-V Coarticulatory Resistance 4.1. Hypotheses 4.2. Measurements and Statistics 4.3. Results 4.3.1. Carryover effect 4.3.1.1. Postboundary (domain-initial) /a/ in /i#a/ 4.3.1.2. Postboundary (domain-initial) /#i/ in /a#i/ 4.3.1.3. Summary of carryover coarticulatory effect 4.3.2. Anticipatory Effect 4.3.2.1. Preboundary (domain-intial) /a/ in /a#i/ 4.3.2.2. Preboundary (domain-final) /i/ in /i#a/ 4.3.2.3. Summary of anticipatory coarticulatory effect 4.3.3. The Reciprocal coarticulatory effect 4.3.3.1. Effect of accent 4.3.3.2. Effect of Boundary Type 4.3.3.3. Effect of Vowel Sequence (/a#i/ vs. /i#a/) 4.3.3.4. Interactions 4.3.3.5. Summary of reciprocal coarticulatory effect 4.3.4. Temporal distance and coarticulatory resistance 4.4. General Discussion 4.4.1. Coarticulatory resistance as a function of accent 4.4.2. Coarticulatory resistance across a prosodic boundary 4.4.3. Accent- vs. boundary-induced coarticulatory resistance 4.4.4. Coarticulatory resistance vs. coarticulatory aggression 4.4.5. Inherent articulatory properties and coarticulatory resistance 4.4.6. Revised Window Model Chapter 5. Effects of Prosody on Lip Movement Kinematics 5.1. Hypotheses 5.2. Measurements and Statistics 5.3. Results 5.3.1. Domain-final C1-to-V1 lip opening gesture 5.3.1.1. Displacement 5.3.1.2. Peak Velocity 5.3.1.3. Total Movement Duration: C1ONS-TO-V1TARG 5.3.1.4. C1ONS-To-V1PKVEL (time-to-peak-velocity) and V1PKVEL-To-V1TARG (deceleration duration) 5.3.2. Discussion about dynamics underlying kinematic differences for C1-to-V1 lip opening gesture 5.3.2.1. Dynamical aspect of accent effects on C1-to-V1 (C1V1# ) lip opening gesture 5.3.2.2. Dynamical aspect of boundary effects on C1-to-V1 lip opening gesture 5.3.3. Domain-initial C2-to-V2 lip opening gesture 5.3.3.1. Displacement (#C2V2) 5.3.3.2. Peak Velocity (#C2V2) 5.3.3.3. Total Movement Duration: C2ONS-TO-V2TARG (#C2V2) 5.3.3.4. C2ONS-To-V2PKVEL and V2PKVEL-To-V2TARG (#C2V2) 5.3.4. Summary and discussion about dynamics underlying kinematic differences for C2-to-V2 lip opening gesture 5.3.4.1. Dynamical aspect of accent effects on C2-to-V2 (#C2V2) lip opening gesture 5.3.4.2. Dynamical aspect of boundary effects on C2-to-V2 (#C2V2) lip opening gesture 5.3.5. V1-to-C2 Closing Gestures 5.3.5.1. Displacement (V1#C2) 5.3.5.2. Peak Velocity (V1#C2) 5.3.5.3. Total Movement Duration: V1ONS-TO-C2TARG 5.3.5.4. V1ONS-To-C2PKVEL and C2PKVEL-To-C2TARG 5.3.6. Summary and discussion about dynamics underlying kinematic differences for V1-to-C2 lip closing gesture 5.3.6.1. Dynamical aspect of V1 Accent effects on V1-to-C2 lip closing gesture 5.3.6.2. Dynamical aspect of V2 Accent effects on V1-to-C2 lip closing gesture 5.3.6.3. Dynamical aspect of boundary effects on V1-to-C2 lip closing gesture 5.4. General Discussion 5.4.1. What are the accent-driven kinematic characteristics underlying lip opening and closing gestures? 5.4.2. Can accent-driven kinematic variations be modeled by a particular dynamical parameter setting? 5.4.4. What are the boundary-driven kinematic characteristics underlying lip opening and closing gestures? 5.4.5. Can boundary-driven kinematic variations modeled by a particular dynamical parameter setting? 5.4.6. Articulatory signature of prosodic structure Chapter 6. Effects of Prosody on V1-to-V2 Tongue Movement Kinematics 6.1. Hypotheses 6.2. Measurements and Statistics 6.3. Results 6.3.1. Effects of Accent 6.3.1.1. Effect of Accent on vertical (y) tongue movement 6.3.1.2. Effect of Accent on horizontal (x) tongue movement 6.3.2. Discussion of dynamics underlying ACC/UNACC differences in kinematics 6.3.2.1. Dynamical aspects of accent for the /i/-to-/a/ vocalic gesture in the y dimension. 6.3.2.2. Dynamical aspects of accent for the /a/-to-/i/ vocalic gesture in the x dimension. 6.3.3. Effects of Boundary Type 6.3.3.1. Effects of Boundary Type on the vertical (y) tongue movement 6.3.3.2. Effects of Boundary Type on the horizontal (x) movement 6.3.4. Discussion of dynamics underlying boundary-induced differences in kinematics 6.3.4.1. Dynamics of boundary-induced kinematic differences in the y dimension 6.3.4.2. Dynamics of boundary-induced kinematic differences in the x dimension 6.4. General Discussion 6.4.1. Accent-induced kinematic variation and task dynamics 6.4.1.1. Accent-induced kinematic variation and strengthening 6.4.1.2. Dynamical accounts 6.4.2. Boundary-induced kinematic variation and task dynamics 6.4.2.1. Boundary-induced kinematic variation and strengthening 6.4.2.2. Dynamical accounts 6.4.2.3. The p-gesture and pre- and postboundary lengthening 6.4.3. Accent- vs. boundary-induced kinematic patterns and articulatory strengthening Chapter 7. Conclusion 7.1. Articulatory strengthening in accented syllables 7.2. Articulatory Strengthening at Domain-edges 7.3. Accent- vs. Boundary-induced Articulatory Strengthening 7.4. Consonantal vs. vocalic domain-initial strengthening 7.5. Articulatory strengthening and its linguistic significance 7.6. Other implications 7.6. Closing remarks Appendix I: The Speech Corpus, Appendix II: R2 Values for Lip Movement Temporal Relationships References, Index

The role of variable vowel duration in differentiating stop phonation in Korean

While vowel duration is known to be significantly influenced by the voicing of the following consonants, little has been found regarding environmental effects of the preceding consonants on vowel duration. This study investigates the environmental effect of both the preceding and the following consonants on vowel duration and shows that, in Korean, vowel length is affected by: (1) voicing of the following consonant and (2) phonation type (e.g., plain, aspirated, reinforced) of the preceding consonant. In the quantitative study of the durational relationship among temporal units (e.g., stop closure, VOT) and adjacent vowels, it is found that the vowel duration is correlated with the phonation type of the preceding consonant: A vowel is longer after reinforced stops, intermediate after plain stops, and shortest after aspirated stops. Unlike the anticipatory consonantal voicing effects, these progressive effects function as a cue for the three-way phonation distinction of Korean stops. The overall results indicate that to fully account for the three-way phonation distinction in Korean, it is necessary to expand the traditional approach (i.e., examining only the target consonant itself) by investigating the acoustic behavior of vocalic elements in the target’s immediate environment.

Cross-linguistic transfer in lexical stress perception: A cue-weighting typology

This study investigates how second-language (L2) listeners from five first-language (L1) backgrounds—English, Dutch, Mandarin, Spanish, and Korean—perceive English lexical stress, focusing on their use of vowel quality, pitch, and duration cues. Participants completed a cue-weighting perception task (Tremblay et al., 2021) in which two acoustic dimensions were manipulated orthogonally while the third was neutralized. Data for Dutch listeners come from the original study. Predictions about cross-linguistic transfer were based on the functional weight of each cue in the L1. The following L1 effects were predicted: For vowel quality: English, Mandarin > Dutch > Spanish, Korean; for pitch: Mandarin > Korean > Dutch, Spanish > English; for duration: English, Mandarin > Dutch, Spanish > Korean. Bayesian mixed-effects models tested the effects of cues and L1 with L2 proficiency (Lemhöfer & Broersma, 2012) as a covariate. The results aligned broadly with our predictions: for vowel quality, English > Mandarin > Dutch > Korean > Spanish; for pitch: Mandarin > Korean, Dutch > Spanish > English; for duration: English, Mandarin, Dutch > Spanish > Korean. These findings support a cue-weighting typology shaped by L1-specific cue prominence, with implications for theories of transfer and perceptual learning in L2 acquisition.

Prosodic strengthening on consonantal nasality and its asymmetric coarticulatory influence on vowel nasalization in CVN# and #NVC in English.

This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korean Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF2013S1A2A2035410) to Taehong Cho.

THE USE OF PROSODIC CUES IN LEARNING NEW WORDS IN AN UNFAMILIAR LANGUAGE

The artificial language learning paradigm was used to investigate to what extent the use of prosodic features is universally applicable or specifically language driven in learning an unfamiliar language, and how nonnative prosodic patterns can be learned. Listeners of unrelated languages—Dutch ( n = 100) and Korean ( n = 100)—participated. The words to be learned varied with prosodic cues: no prosody, fundamental frequency (F0) rise in initial and final position, final lengthening, and final lengthening plus F0 rise. Both listener groups performed well above chance level with the final lengthening cue, confirming its crosslinguistic use. As for final F0 rise, however, Dutch listeners did not use it until the second exposure session, whereas Korean listeners used it at initial exposure. Neither group used initial F0 rise. On the basis of these results, F0 and durational cues appear to be universal in the sense that they are used across languages for their universally applicable auditory-perceptual saliency, but how they are used is language specific and constrains the use of available prosodic cues in processing a nonnative language. A discussion on how these findings bear on theories of second language (L2) speech perception and learning is provided.

Compensation for Complete Assimilation in Speech Perception: The Case of Korean Labial-to-Velar Assimilation

In connected speech, phonological assimilation to neighboring words can lead to pronunciation variants (e.g., 'garden bench' ?''gardem bench").A large body of literature suggests that listeners use the phonetic context to reconstruct the intended word for assimilation types that often lead to incomplete assimilations (e.g., a pronunciation of ''garden" that carries cues for both a labial [m] and an alveolar [n]).In the current paper, we show that a similar context effect is observed for an assimilation that is often complete, Korean labial-to-velar place assimilation.In contrast to the context effects for partial assimilations, however, the context effects seem to rely completely on listeners' experience with the assimilation pattern in their native language.

Phonetic structures of Aleut

A detailed analysis of the phonetic structures of Aleut, a moribund language spoken in Alaska, shows how much general phonetic information can be gathered from the investigation of an endangered language. Aleut has an unusual distribution of consonants, with varying functional loads. There are no bilabial stops. Among alveolar, velar and uvular stops, VOT is shorter for alveolar than for velar or uvular stops, but, despite current general phonetic theories, there is no difference in VOT between velar and uvular stops. VOT is also longer before long vowels than before short vowels. Uvular consonants have a significant effect on the formants of following high vowels. There are three vowels and a vowel length contrast. Again, despite previous general phonetic predictions concerning languages with vowel-length contrasts, length plays a role in characterizing stress. Contrastive ratios are maintained between short and long vowels and stressed syllables are longer. Analyses of intonation show that each content word has a peak at its beginning and a trough at its end. Word contours combine with sentence downtrends to form sentence contours of cascading F 0, each word a step in the cascade. But, unlike the situation in other languages, yes/no questions have the same intonation contours as declarative sentences. Phonetic descriptions and measurements of general theoretical interest include C and V inventories, VOT measurements for coronal, velar and uvular stops, vowel-quality plots, vowel-duration measurements, question and declarative pitch tracks, pitch-track smoothing, and question vs. declarative sentence pitch medians.

Prosodic-structural effects on voice quality associated with Korean three-way stop contrast.

Korean stops and affricates: Acoustic and perceptual characteristics of the following vowel

Despite numerous studies on lax, aspirated, and fortis stops in Korean, few have reported on the role of the following vowel in consonant perception. This paper examines the degree to which vowels convey the phonation characteristics of the preceding obstruents, with a hypothesis: Native speakers utilize vowel’s quality in perceiving the preceding obstruents. This study includes (1) acoustic analyses of VOT, F0, intensity build-up, and vowel length and (2) the perception test, where subjects were instructed to indentify CV syllables using stimuli with consonant portions completely removed. The acoustic analyses indicate that the acoustic characteristics associated with vowels pattern systematically with preceding obstruents (e.g., systematic difference in vowel length). In the perception test, subjects correctly identified the missing consonant 78% of the time, supporting the hypothesis. The probability was higher for the fortis than for the aspirated obstruents: Obstruents with longer VOTs spread less acoustic information into the following vowels, suggesting that the nature of VOT is possibly ‘‘voiceless vowelness.’’ Most wrongly identified aspirated obstruents were misperceived as fortis ones, confirming that the aspirated and the fortis consonants share some acoustic features (e.g., higher F0, rapid intensity buildup). The overall results indicate that following vowels play a pivotal role in consonant perception.

Glottal stops do not constrain lexical access as do oral stops

The Role of Segmental Information in Syntactic Processing Through the Syntax–Prosody Interface

In two experiments, it was investigated whether potentially contrastive segmental information in the form of an epenthetic glottal stop in Maltese can influence syntactic parsing decisions. The glottal stop in Maltese serves a dual function as a phoneme used for lexical contrast and a non-contrastive phone that may mark a prosodic juncture. In both experiments, participants perceived a larger prosodic boundary before the word u (Engl. “and”) if the u was produced with an epenthetic glottal stop, showing the use of prosodically conditioned segmental information in syntactic parsing. Furthermore, listeners were generally unaware of the existence of the epenthetic glottal stop even though a glottal stop is used as a phoneme represented as a grapheme “q.” They also perceived a larger prosodic juncture when the preceding syllable was lengthened before the word u (“and”). These findings were consistent regardless of whether the glottal stop reinforced a late-closure decision (Experiment 1) or an early-closure decision (Experiment 2). The results indicate that both segmental and suprasegmental information influences syntactic parsing decisions, demonstrating that the syntax–prosody interface is reflected along both the segmental and suprasegmental (duration) dimensions, which are mediated by the phonetics–prosody interface.

A Preliminary Report on Perceptual Resolutions of Korean Consonant Cluster Simplification and Their Possible Change over Time

The present study examined how listeners of Seoul Korean would recover deleted phonemes in consonant cluster simplification. In a phoneme monitoring experiment, listeners had to monitor for C2 (/k/ or /p/) in C1C2C3 when C2 was deleted (C1 was preserved) or preserved (C1 was deleted). The target consonant (C2) was either /k/ or /p/ (e.g., ilk-t?lato vs. palp-t?lato), and there were two listener groups, one group tested in 2002 and the other in 2009. Some points have emerged from the results. First, listeners were able to detect deleted phonemes as accurately and rapidly as preserved phonemes, showing that the physical presence of the acoustic information did not improve the listeners' performance. This suggests that listeners must have relied on language-specific phonological knowledge about the consonant cluster simplification, rather than relying on the low-level acoustic-phonetic information. Second, listener groups (participants in 2002 vs. 2009), differed in processing /p/ versus /k/: listeners in 2009 failed to detect /p/ more frequently than those in 2002, suggesting that the way the consonant cluster sequence is produced and perceived has changed over time. This result was interpreted as coming from statistical patterns of speech production in contemporary Seoul Korean as reported in a recent study by Cho & Kim (2009): /p/ is deleted far more often than /p/ is preserved, which is likely reflected in the way listeners process simplified variants. Finally, listeners processed /k/ more efficiently than /p/, especially when the target was physically present (in C-preserved condition), indicating that listeners benefited more from the presence of /k/ than of /p/. This was interpreted as supporting the view that velars are perceptually more robust than labials, which constrains shaping phonological patterns of the language. These results were then discussed in terms of their implications for theories of spoken word recognition.

Optical cues to the visual perception of lexical and phrasal stress in English

In a study of optical cues to the visual perception of stress, three American English talkers spoke words that differed in lexical stress and sentences that differed in phrasal stress, while video and movements of the face were recorded.In a production analysis, stressed vs. unstressed syllables from these utterances were compared along many measures of facial movement, which were generally larger and faster under stress.In a visual perception experiment, 16 perceivers identified the location of stress in forced-choice judgments of video clips of these utterances (without audio).Phrasal stress (54% correct vs. 25% chance) was better-perceived than lexical stress (62% correct vs. 50% chance).The relation of the visual intelligibility of the prosody of these utterances to the optical characteristics of their production is discussed, with analysis of which cues are associated with successful visual perception.

Use of tonal information in French and English listeners’ segmentation of Korean speech

(Seoul) Korean has been analyzed as having an Accentual Phrase (AP) with a L(HL)H tonal pattern for APs beginning with a lenis segment (Jun, 1998). This tonal information modulates Korean listeners’ speech segmentation (Kim & Cho, 2009; Tremblay, Shin, Kim, & Cho, 2018). This study investigates whether French- and English-speaking late learners of Korean can also use this tonal information. French has similarly been analyzed as having an AP with a L(HL)H tonal pattern (Jun & Fougeron, 2002). In contrast, English words are often stressed initially (Cutler & Carter, 1987), with nuclear-pitch-accented words beginning with a H tone (Beckman, 1986). French, English, and Korean listeners completed an eye-tracking experiment. They heard sentences containing a temporary ambiguity between an AP-initial target (saesinbu-ga]AP[masul-eul ‘the-new-bride-subj magic-obj’) and a disyllabic competitor spanning the AP boundary (gama"palanquin"). Stimuli were resynthesized to orthogonally manipulate the AP-final and AP-initial tones (H/L). Results show that learners eventually used the AP-final and AP-initial tones like Korean listeners, but French listeners made earlier use of both tones than English listeners, even if the AP-initial tone is less crucial to French speech segmentation (Tremblay, Broersma, Coughlin, & Choi, 2016). Speech segmentation is thus very adaptive, even among late learners.

Effects of morphological structure on intergestural timing in different prosodic-structural contexts in Korean

We thank the Korean speakers for their participation, and the reviewers for their helpful comments. This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF2018S1A5A2A03036736).

Acoustic and aerodynamic correlates of Korean stops and fricatives

This study examines acoustic and aerodynamic characteristics of consonants in standard Korean and in Cheju, an endangered Korean language. The focus is on the well-known three-way distinction among voiceless stops (i.e., lenis, fortis, aspirated) and the two-way distinction between the voiceless fricatives /s/ and /s*/. While such a typologically unusual contrast among voiceless stops has long drawn the attention of phoneticians and phonologists, there is no single work in the literature that discusses a body of data representing a relatively large number of speakers. This study reports a variety of acoustic and aerodynamic measures obtained from 12 Korean speakers (four speakers of Seoul Korean and eight speakers of Cheju). Results show that, in addition to findings similar to those reported by others, there are three crucial points worth noting. Firstly, lenis, fortis, and aspirated stops are systematically differentiated from each other by the voice quality of the following vowel. Secondly, these stops are also differentiated by aerodynamic mechanisms. The aspirated and fortis stops are similar in supralaryngeal articulation, but employ a different relation between intraoral pressure and flow. Thirdly, our study suggests that the fricative /s/ is better categorized as “lenis” rather than “aspirated”. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of Korean data for theories of the voicing contrast and their phonological representations.

Unveiling Denasalization as an Ongoing Sound Change: The Role of Prosody and Gender in Seoul Korean

This study examines variation in coarticulatory vowel nasalization in Seoul Korean as a function of prosodic boundaries and gender, exploring its role in an emerging denasalization sound change. Coarticulatory vowel nasality, measured by A1–P0, was analyzed in the word-initial vowels of /ma.mi/ across three prosodic boundary conditions (IP-initial, AP-initial, and Wd-initial) in 35 speakers in their 20s. Results show that phrase-initial vowels exhibit reduced nasality as part of domain-initial articulatory strengthening, suggesting that denasalization of word-initial nasal consonants extends to the following vowel, reducing its coarticulatory nasalization and thus signaling the progression of a position-driven sound change. Significant gender differences were found: male speakers consistently adhere to this change throughout the vowel, exhibiting greater reductions in coarticulatory vowel nasalization in phrase-initial contexts. In contrast, female speakers retain higher nasality levels in both phrase-initial and phrase-medial positions by regulating the coarticulatory process. These gender-related differences may reflect socially grounded perceptions of nasality and/or female speakers’ tendency to preserve phonological features, influencing speech production choices. These findings highlight the interplay between prosodically driven phonetic variation and gender: speakers actively control the degree of vowel nasalization, and this phonetic variation, in turn, is further shaped by gender, potentially evolving into a systematic sound change.

Prosodic-structural modulation of stop voicing contrast along the VOT continuum in trochaic and iambic words in American English

This study explores the phonetic nature of phonological stop voicing contrast in American English by investigating how phonetic implementation of the voicing contrast is modulated by the prosodic structure along the continuum of phonetic voicing. In particular, the present study examines (1) the effects of two kinds of prosodic strengthening that can arise with prosodic structuring, a boundary-related domain-initial strengthening (DIS) and a prominence-induced strengthening, and (2) the possible enhancement types of linguistic contrasts that can underlie prosodic strengthening. The phonetic voicing was estimated using the Integrated Voicing Index (IVI), taking into account both the voicing lag (positive VOT) and the voiced interval during the closure. Results obtained with initial stops in both trochaic and iambic words are encapsulated as follows. Under the influence of DIS, both voiced and voiceless stops were produced with an increase in voicelessness, showing an enhancement of structurally motivated syntagmatic (CV) contrast. The effect size was larger for voiced stops, yielding a boundary-induced phonetic reduction of voicing contrast. Under the influence of prominence (focus), both voiced and voiceless stops showed an increase in voicelessness only in trochaic words, but this time, it was voiceless stops that showed a far greater effect, resulting in a maximization of voicing contrast—i.e., an enhancement of paradigmatic contrast. Moreover, the reduced voicing for voiced stops under prominence even in the medial position indicates that voiced stops are realized in reference to the phonetic feature {vl. unaspirated} rather than {voiced}. These findings imply that seemingly non-contrastive low-level variation is indeed systematically modulated by the prosodic structure in reference to phonetic representations that regulate the phonetic implementation of phonological contrast in a given language. An alternative account is also discussed in the framework of Articulatory Phonology.

Developmental pathway of phonetic fine-tuning of phonological contrast in reference to information structure: The case of three-way contrastive stops in Korean.

This study investigates the acquisition of three-way stop contrast (lenis, aspirated, fortis) in Korean and phonetic modulation of the phonological contrast driven by information structure. VOT and F0 of the stops produced by children (4-5, 7-8, 10-11 year-olds) and adults in broad, narrow, and contrastive focus conditions were measured. Results indicated that only the 7-8 year-olds showed the three-way distinction using VOT under (phonemic) contrastive focus, while the other two children groups and adults did not. As for F0, adults made a three-way distinction using F0 in all focus conditions, while the 7-8 and the 10-11 year-olds did so only under limited focus conditions. The 4-5 year-olds did not show the three-way distinction in any focus condition. The results suggest that children build up their phonological awareness and fine-tune phonetic realization in their developmental pathway in conjunction with different functions of information structure