This study investigates whether the stress foot is a planned timing unit in American English, by examining the durational characteristics of the foot in three different prosodic contexts i) within an intermediate phrase, ii) across an intermediate phrase and iii) across an intonational phrase. The results show that as the number of syllables in a foot increases, the duration of the foot increas...

In this paper we present an experiment to determine the types of constituents that influence polysyllabic shortening. Materials were designed to encourage the use of rhythmic, prominencebased, cross-word (Abercrombian) feet. Our preliminary results suggest that when polysyllabic shortening occurs, it operates preferentially within word-based constituents of the prosodic hierarchy (Selkirk [9], ...

This study is intended to describe and analyze the durational patterns of native Japanese speakers learning English, with a focus on two major prosodic effects: phrase-final lengthening and stresstimed shortening. To investigate the relative contribution of these effects, a production experiment was conducted, adapting the methodological framework of Beckman and Edwards (1990). The effects of t...

The polysyllabic shortening hypothesis holds that the duration of a primary stressed syllable is inversely proportional to the number of additional syllables within the word. We examine the evidence for this process in British English speech by measuring the duration of primary stressed syllables in monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic words, both right-headed series – e.g. mend, commend, r...

This study examined how duration of an unstressed final syllable in English is affected by conditions in the following word: stress (trochaic/iambic), accent (accented/unaccented), and initial stop voicing (voiced/voiceless). Results showed that the unstressed final syllable was shorter before an unstressed syllable, presumably due to polysyllabic shortening—i.e., the following unstressed sylla...

telomeres can cause problems. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2010;65A:789–91. 29. Lorenz M, Saretzki G, Sitte N, Metzkow S, von Zglinicki T. BJ fibroblasts display high antioxidant capacity and slow telomere shortening independent of hTERT transfection. Free Radic Biol Med 2001;31:824–31. 30. Bodnar AG, Ouellette M, Frolkis M et al. Extension of life-span by introduction of telomerase into norma...