2008/09/17

Kuzla, C., Cho, T., & Ernestus, M. (2007). Prosodic strengthening of German fricatives in duration and assimilatory devoicing. Journal of Phonetics, 35, 301–320.

Presentation: Sarah

Summary: Angela

In this study, the authors tried to pinpoint the role that prosodic strengthening, assimilation, and phonotactics played in two German contexts in which these rules conflicted with one another. In order to do so, the authors examined the effect these rules had on three German fricatives /f, v, z/. Fortis-lenis is indicated by two correlates: one is the frication duration and the other is the vibration of the vocal folds. Accordingly, the longer the frication duration and the shorter the vocal folds vibration the more fortis a fricative becomes. Now, the initial prosodic strengthening rule predicted that regardless of context, the lenis fricative /v, z/ would all become longer (thus more fortis-like) as the level of the prosodic boundary gets higher. On the other hand, the assimilatory devoicing rule predicted that the lower the prosodic boundary, the more the assimilation. In other words, in the assimilation context of /t#_/, the fricatives /v, z/ should have less vocal fold vibration (thus becoming more fortis-like) as the prosodic boundary gets lower. Phonotactic constraints predicted that German people would have a lower tendency in making their /v/ more fortis-like compared to /z/ because this would cause categorical confusion. The results of the experiment showed that the initial prosodic lengthening rule did indeed make the lenis fricatives more fortis-like by increasing its duration in higher boundaries, but the assimilatory devoicing rule also made the fortis fricatives more lenis-like by increasing vocal folds vibration in higher boundaries. Therefore, the authors suggest that they should resort to perceptual experiments in the future to determine the relative importance of these cues. With regards to the phonotactic constraints in German, the authors proved that /v/ was less devoiced compared with /z/. This showed that while prosodic structure was influential, its effect was not strong enough as to overwrite categorical distinctions.