Effects of prosodic boundary and syllable structure on the temporal realization of CV gestures

An articulatory study was conducted to explore effects of prosodic boundary and syllable structure on temporal realizations of /ma/ in C♯V vs. ♯CV in Korean (where ‘♯’ denotes an Intonational Phrase or a Word boundary). The vocalic gesture underwent boundary-induced lengthening more in C♯V than in ♯CV, implying that the boundary effect is largely localized to the initial element whether consonantal or vocalic. CV coordination patterns were temporally neutralized between ♯CV and C♯V in the phrase-internal Word boundary condition, showing a possible ‘resyllabifiation’ of ‘C’ with the following vowel in C♯V in the articulatory temporal measures taken in the present study. It was suggested that CV gestures in C♯V, whose phasing relationship has to be determined postlexically, reorganize temporally in an in-phase coupling mode just like the way CV gestures are phased in ♯CV. Finally, while there was leftward shifting of the consonantal gesture in C♯V with some temporal variability across an IP vs. a Word boundary, intergestural timing in ♯CV remained invariant regardless of boundary strength. But the most stable temporal pattern was observed with an IP boundary in ♯CV, interpretable as an important temporal characteristic of domain-initial strengthening. Some of these results were further discussed in terms of their implications for the theory of π-gesture and the gestural coupling model of syllable structure.