Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

R Berkovits

Publications and source records attributed to R Berkovits.

41 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Progressive utterance-final lengthening in syllables with final fricatives.

The generality of the pattern of progressively greater lengthening within the utterance-final syllable, previously found with respect to final stops, is shown to extend to syllables in Hebrew with final fricatives. Seven native speakers of Hebrew read matched sentence pairs in which bisyllabic key words appeared in non-final and sentence-final position. Final fricatives showed almost four times as much utterance-final lengthening as the preceding stressed vowel. Final lengthening affected the duration of each segment of the final syllable, and also extended to the initial unstressed syllable of the final word. Though final fricatives showed more lengthening in sentence-final position than final-stop closures, no difference was found in the lengthening of the vowels preceding these consonants. The greater lengthening of the final fricative relative to the preceding vowel resulted in C/V ratios which failed to distinguish between the voiceless fricative in non-final position and the voiced fricative in utterance-final position. These results suggest that sentence position is taken into account in the perception of voicing, such that the C/V ratio applicable in non-final position is increased by a factor of two in final position.

Female↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Durational effects in final lengthening, gapping, and contrastive stress.

Lengthening in utterance-final position and in contrastive stress was examined in Hebrew, focusing on the distribution of the durational effect across syllables and within the final syllable. Initially-stressed and finally-stressed bisyllabic key words were read in sentence-final versus nonfinal position, and in contrastive stress versus nonstressed constructions. The results were compared with data from an earlier study of verb gapping. Contrastive stress showed a smaller effect than final lengthening and verb gapping, consistent with the claim that other acoustic parameters are more prominently involved in this process. Utterance-final lengthening and verb gapping principally affected the final syllable regardless of stress, whereas contrastive stress primarily lengthened the stressed syllable. The pattern of progressively greater lengthening within the utterance-final syllable, previously found for stressed syllables, applied to unstressed syllables as well. The finding that target syllables in sentence-final position are characterized by progressive lengthening, unlike those in contrastive stress and gapping, supports the suggestion that utterance-final lengthening is a reflection of deceleration at the end of motor activity. Durational measures of individual syllables within the key word, and of segments in addition to the vocalic portion of the final syllable, reveal differences in the acoustic implementation of different lengthening processes.

Female↗