This paper examines some articulatory and acoustic characteristics of American English. The results suggest that the jaw may be the articulatory organizer of phrasal rhythm, manifested acoustically through the F2-F1 pattern. Utterance prominence, such as contrastive emphasis, is additionally manifested by increased F0 along with increased duration on the prominent word. The rhythmical organization of the utterance, based on strong-weak jaw opening patterns, may be different from the intonational organization involving pitch accents/ boundary strengths. American English prosody might be best described using a parallel system involving both a rhythm system based on articulation, and an intonational system involving pitch notations.
Cite as: Erickson, D. (2010) An articulatory account of rhythm, prominence, and phrasal organization. Proc. Speech Prosody 2010, paper 2006
@inproceedings{erickson10b_speechprosody,
author={Donna Erickson},
title={{An articulatory account of rhythm, prominence, and phrasal organization}},
year=2010,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2010},
pages={paper 2006}
}