The Phonetics of Emphatic Vowel Lengthening in English

Authors

  • Aaron Braver Texas Tech University
  • Natalie Dresher Rutgers University
  • Shigeto Kawahara Keio University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v2i0.3754

Keywords:

English, Emphatic lengthening

Abstract

While many languages show lexical contrasts based on duration in vowels and consonants, such lexical durational contrasts are usually limited to binary distinctions (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996). Within the phonetically-driven phonology approach (Hayes and Steraide 2004), one explanation for this fact is that, in the spirit of Dispersion Theory (Liljencrants & Lindblom 1972, Lindblom 1986), listeners have difficulty perceiving contrasts that are above binary. An alternative articulation-based explanation is that this preference is due to difficulties in producing such fine distinctions.

This paper reports two experiments, which support the first, perception-difficulty theory, based on a non-lexical use of phonetic duration: lengthening to express pragmatic emphasis (e.g. Thank you sooooo much). Experiment 1 shows that some English speakers can produce beyond-binary durational distinctions, and Experiment 2 shows English speakers do not perceive these distinctions. These findings support the view that perception is behind the preference for binary lexical duration contrasts, while eliminating the articulation-based explanation

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Published

2016-06-01

Issue

Section

Supplemental Proceedings