Durations of Stops across Word Boundaries: With Focus on Voicing and Places of Articulations

Abstract

The present study is aimed at investigating how voicing and places of articulations affect durations of stops across word boundaries. English and Korean speakers produced English nonsense word pairs where stops were placed at both the word-final positions of the first words and the word-initial positions of the second words of the pairs. Based on the results of the experiment, only voicing of both stops was statistically significant to differentiate the word boundaries in the English speakers’ productions. However, in the Korean speakers’ productions both voicing and places of articulations of the word-initial stops of the second words were statistically significant, but those of the word-final stops of the first words were not. This is due to the coda neutralization of Korean phonology. Since stops were not exploded/released at the coda/word-final position, voicing features of the word-final stops of the first words were not differentiated. Thus voicing and places of articulations affected only the word-initial stops of the second words, which changed the durations of the stops across word boundaries.