stress or juncture?

[Donald M. Lance]

Some pitch extractions that I've done indicate that what we think is a pause is actually
lengthening of a syllable, with more lengthening when the pitch on the syllable drops.
There may or may not be a "pause" or cessation of phonation "between" syllables.  The
structuralists said juncture phenomena occurred between syllables, but they were basing
their argument on impressionistic rather than acoustic phonetics.  Ron's argument is on
target, but prominence would be a better term than stress, the latter suggesting loudness,
may or may not play a part in perceptual prominence in a given utterance.  If the pitch is
lowered, the lengthening increases to assure the impression of prominence, and
intensity/volume may be lower along with lower pitch.  Hyperlengthening would occur in
constrastive or emphatic utterances.  Plus juncture is manifested as slight lengthening
and may or may not include cessation of phonation/articulation.  The guys who proposed the
term juncture intended it to refer to nonemphatic speech, that is, not to "unusually
lengthy pause."

DMLance

RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> Moreover, upon refelction, it seems a little weird to posit the chief
> differential here as "juncture" that "comes" BETWEEN syllables yet is
> manifested ONLY by increasing the prominence (by means of hyperlengthening)
> of the PRECEDING syullable. Why not just call the increasing of prominence as
> stress? (After all,as Don's "2" versus "3" indicates, lengthening brings some
> increase in loudness as well.) Wouldn't it make sense to reserve the term
> "juncture" for phenomena that actually take place between the words, e.g.,
> unusually lengthy pause and/or modification of the actual junctural phones?