ASA 127th Meeting M.I.T. 1994 June 6-10

4aSP8. Accent-bearing units.

Alice E. Turk

Res. Lab. of Electron., Rm. 36-531, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139

This paper presents acoustic evidence for the nature of accent-bearing units in American English. The interactive effects of accent and syllable affiliation on consonant duration were examined to see if the effect of accent on syllable margins depends on their syllable affiliation. Results show a greater effect of accent on syllable onsets than on syllable codas. Although the nature of the rime is known to influence the location of stress placement in English, the findings presented here suggest that the entire syllable, rather than the nucleus or rime, is the accent-bearing unit. [Work supported by NIH Grant Nos. R01DC00219 and T32-DC00036 to SUNY at Buffalo.]