Segmental effects on Prosodic Domain -initial Strengthening

This study examines the effect of laryngeal consonants of Korean on prosodic domain-initial strengthening. Keating, Cho, Fougeron & Hsu (1999), Fougeron & Keating (1996), and Hsu & Jun (1998) found that consonants at the beginnings of larger phrases are more constricted than consonants at the beginnings of smaller phrases. Korean laryngeal consonants pose a counter-example to the general pattern of domain-initial strengthening since tense and aspirated consonants are longer word-medially than word-initially. Previous work on domain-initial strengthening focused on domain-initial consonants at different prosodic domains. This study shows that acoustic cues that are not domain-edge also function to demarcate prosodic structure when the domain-initial consonant is laryngeal: VOT for an aspirated consonant and duration of V2 for a tense consonant.