What is special about prosodic strengthening in Korean: Evidence in lingual movement in V#V and V#CV

The present study investigates effects of Boundary and Prominence (focus) on the /a/-to-/i/ tongue movement in Korean in two contexts: V#V and V#/m/V. Results show that the tongue movement at an IP boundary is larger, longer, and faster. Prominence effects show a relatively weaker but comparable pattern to the boundary effect, showing a larger, longer, and faster movement. The observed boundary-induced strengthening pattern in Korean is clearly different from that in English, implying that Korean, a language without constraints from the lexical stress system, has more freedom to strengthen articulation at prosodic junctures, creating strengthening patterns which are often encountered with prominence marking in English. Results also reveal that the presence of a consonant influences transboundary vocalic movement, and that the consonantal influence is further modulated by boundary strength. These results taken together are further discussed in terms of language-specificity of prosodic strengthening and its implications for the pi-gesture model.