Preliminary evidence of syllable locked temporal control of F0

The temporal organization of the Fo contour in Swedish words with the grave accent (accent 11) has been investigated. Consonants and consonant c lus te rs of different length and complexity (from r b ] to [ r3 s t s p 1 ] were inserted between the two syllable kerne ls of com p a n d disyllabic nonsense words and the effect of the resulting tempor a l perturbations on the Fo contour of the second vowel, i.e. the vowe l in the syllable with the acute tone, was then studied. It was found that increased distance between the two vowel onsets, brought about by increased medial cluster length resulted in a reorganization of the Fo contour. The character is t ic r is ing contour in the second syllable was generally observed in the vowel segment even for words containing the mos t complex consonant c lus te rs , although delayed in t ime with reference to the onset of the f i r s t vowel. It i s suggested that the underlying rule i s to synchronize the supraglottal events of a given syllable with its Fo variation. In synthesis by-rule applications a standard, invariant Fo contour may be used for the acute accented syllable in grave accented words.