An Acoustic Phonetic Study of Close Juncture

The theoretical and acoustic approach of this research has reached the following conclusions: -Close juncture has a reality that can be described in physical terms. -Junctural phenomena are differences in the grouping of phonemes into syllables. -Juncture is remarkably correlated with word boundaries. -The correlation of juncture with morpheme boundaries is determined by the coincidence of word boundaries with morpheme boundaries.- There is a potential juncture at word boundaries which may not be realized when uttering the sequence of sounds. -When there is no phonetic manifestation present, we can say that there is no juncture. -A given ordered set of phonemes may constitute a bounded sequence. -Each bounded sequence starts and ends with a marginal allophone. -Within the hierarchical phonological structure of the language, the bounded sequence appears as a higher- level unit than the phoneme. -A distribution of a sequence of segmental phonemes between different bounded sequences is possible when the phoneme sequence in question may occur as final and initial sounds as the acoustic analysis of the pair night-rate and nitrate shows; where a medial allophone of l t l in night-rate and in nitrate, the medial allophone of l aI l is followed by the initial allophone of l tr l.