On the neutralizing status of truncation in intonation: A perception study of boundary tones in German and Russian

The study examined the effect of f0-truncation on the perception of phrase-final boundary tones in two truncating languages with similarities in their phonological inventories, German and Russian. In particular, the identification of truncated rise–falls (L*+H L%) and rise–plateaus (L*+H H%) under maximized time pressure was addressed, i.e. the nuclear syllable was phrase-final and consisted of a short vowel with voiceless onset and coda consonants. The results revealed that in both languages, truncation did not lead to a complete perceptual merger of the two forms but the situation was found closer to a complete neutralization in Russian as compared to German. More specifically, the temporal domain was exploited to preserve the contrast between L% and H% in German. The listeners showed a slight phrase-final f0-drop to be essential for the identification of L% as opposed to a simple f0-rise which was sufficient to identify H%. In Russian, the frequency domain was predominantly utilized to distinguish between the underlying L% and H% with the unexpected result that a strong upscaling of all f0-targets was necessary for L% to be perceived. The results are discussed in terms of the autosegmental-metrical theory of intonation; and some parallels are drawn between phrase-final positions at segmental and prosodic levels.

► The paper examines whether f0-truncation results in neutralization of boundary tone contrasts.
► In two truncating intonation languages, no complete neutralization was observed.
► German listeners exploit acoustic cues from the temporal domain.
► Russian listeners rely on acoustic cues from the frequency domain.