Effects of vowel quality on stress production in disyllables with reference to perceptual centers

Listeners appear to make use of a complex relation of relative vowel quality differences, syllable duration differences, and syllable position effects to perceive stress in synthesized disyllables in English. The present experiment tests whether speakers make use of the same sort of information in articulating disyllables. Four speakers produced rate-controlled sets of tokens with first, and second syllable stress of twelve disyllables that differed in the component vowels. Tokens were elicited under two conditions: Where the sequence of tokens were identical in both stress pattern and vowel composition, and where the tokens alternated in either stress pattern, vowel composition, or both. Preliminary results of spectrographic analyses show correlations of stressed vowel durations with vowel quality, in addition to correlations with syllable position and elicitation conditions. The findings lend support to the view that perceptual centers correspond to articulatory activity related to the stressed vowel.