The Accentual Phrase in Singapore English.

‘This is the peer-reviewed but unedited manuscript version of the following article: Chong, A. J. and J. Sneed German (2017). "The Accentual Phrase in Singapore English." Phonetica 74(2): 63-80.The final, published version is available at https://www.karger.com/?DOI=10.1159/000447429This paper reports on a speech production experiment that explores whether the accentual phrase (AP) represents an abstract level of prosodic phrasing in Singapore English. Specifically, it tests whether the right edge of the AP is associated with phrase-final lengthening, the degree of which can be distinguished from lengthening associated with the intonational phrase (IP). Target words were produced in matched sentence contexts in 3 phrasal positions: AP-medial (wordfinal), AP-final, and IP-final. As predicted, target words in AP-final position were longer than those in AP-medial position and shorter than those in IP-final position. Analysis of target duration and f0 together shows that AP boundaries are well discriminated from medial positions. Together, these results strongly support an AP level of phrasing for Singapore English and highlight its role in predicting timing variability

Prosodic phrasing and F0 in Singapore English

International audienceA number of studies have investigated the phonetic properties of intonation patterns in Singapore English (SE). Additionally, it has been proposed that SE intonation is structured by a level of phonological phrasing above the word called the Accentual Phrase (AP), which encompasses a content word and preceding function words. This study investigates experimentally whether there are any durational correlates of AP boundaries and explores their possible relationship to established F0 patterns. In addition, the sensitivity of F0 movements to lexical stress within an AP is examined. Our findings show that word-final syllables at an AP boundary are marked by longer vowel durations than those in a phrase-medial word, and that this difference corresponds closely with known F0 correlates. Finally, within an AP, stress in a word-initial syllable results in an overall raising of F0 across the entire phrase, although the actual slopes of the contours do not differ