Testing Bolinger's hypothesis of pre‐accentual lengthening

Algorithms were developed for acoustic prosodic analysis (Lea and Clermont, Proc. 1984 ICASSP, paper 42.7), including voicing decisions, syllabic nuclei locations, phrase boundary detections, and stressed syllable locations. Other algorithms permit interactively entering listener decisions of syllabic durations, perceived stress levels, identifications of syllables (or other segments) that test specific hypotheses, and linguistic predictions. Using such algorithms and standard signal processing and statistics software, researchers can automatically and efficiently test prosodic hypotheses. Selected for initial application of such capabilities was Dwight Bolinger's unpublished hypothesis that any full syllable is longer (and of higher Fo) immediately before another full syllable than before a reduced syllable. Minimal‐pair contrasts in accent sequences were embedded in 50 sentences spoken at fast and slow rates by each of two talkers, and 45 all‐sonorant sentences spoken twice by one speaker. Syllabic durations were derived from listener markings and from automatic syllabification, then compared, and statistically analyzed, for verification of the hypothesis. Fundamental frequency values at centers of nuclei were also studied.