Syntactic blocking of phonological rules in speech production

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 61; no. 5; pp. 1314 - 1320
• Main Authors: Cooper, William E., Lapointe, Steven G., Paccia, Jeanne M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-01-1977
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.381434

The duration of a stressed syllable is shortened when it is immediately followed by an unstressed syllable. Previous work showed that this effect operates across word boundaries but may be blocked by the presence of an intervening syntactic boundary. It may be assumed that certain syntactic boundaries act as junctures in processing which prohibit look ahead for phonological rules normally operating across word boundaries. In three experiments, the blocking phenomenon has been tested for a variety of syntactic boundaries in phonetically matched sentences. The results for 11 speakers show that the shortening effect is blocked in the presence of a number of boundaries. No blocking effect was observed for two other weak boundaries. The difference between the strong and weak boundaries has been accounted for in terms of the structural property of branching depth. An alternative to the blocking notion, involving possible differences in phrase-final lengthening, is also considered.