Phrase boundaries lacking word prosody: An articulatory investigation of Seoul Korean

This electromagnetic articulography study explores the kinematic profile of Intonational Phrase boundaries in Seoul Korean. Recent findings suggest that the scope of phrase-final lengthening is conditioned by word- and/or phrase-level prominence. However, evidence comes mainly from head-prominence languages, which conflate positions of word prosody with positions of phrasal prominence. Here, we examine phrase-final lengthening in Seoul Korean, an edge-prominence language with no word prosody, with respect to focus location as an index of phrase-level prominence and Accentual Phrase (AP) length as an index of word demarcation. Results show that phrase-final lengthening extends over the phrase-final syllable. The effect is greater the further away that focus occurs. It also interacts with the domains of AP and prosodic word: lengthening is greater in smaller APs, whereas shortening is observed in the initial gesture of the phrase-final word. Additional analyses of kinematic displacement and peak velocity revealed that Korean phrase-final gestures bear the kinematic profile of IP boundaries concurrently to what is typically considered prominence marking. Based on these results, a gestural coordination account is proposed, in which boundary-related events interact systematically with phrase-level prominence as well as lower prosodic levels, and how this proposal relates to the findings in head-prominence languages is discussed.