juncture (n.)

A term used in PHONOLOGY to refer to the PHONETIC boundary features which may demarcate GRAMMATICAL UNITS such as MORPHEME, WORD or CLAUSE. The most obvious junctural feature is silence, but in CONNECTED SPEECH this feature is not as common as the use of various MODIFICATIONS to the beginnings and endings of grammatical units. Word division, for example, can be signalled by a complex of PITCH, STRESS, LENGTH and other features, as in the potential contrast between that stuff and that’s tough. In a SEGMENTAL phonological TRANSCRIPTION, these appear identical, , but there are several phonetic modifications which can differentiate them in speech. In that stuff the /s/ is strongly ARTICULATED and the /t/ is unaspirated, whereas in that’s tough the /s/ is relatively weak and the /t/ is ASPIRATED. In rapid speech such distinctions may disappear: they are only potentially CONTRASTIVE.

There have been several attempts to establish a typology of junctures. A commonly used distinction is between open or plus juncture (the features used at a word boundary, before silence), as illustrated in the above example (usually transcribed with a plus sign <+>), and close juncture (referring to the normal transitions between sounds within a word). To handle the special cases of an open transition within a word, as in co-opt, the notion of internal open juncture may be used. A more general distinction sometimes used to handle these possibilities is that between ‘open’ and ‘close’ transition.

In some American analyses of the INTONATION patterns of larger grammatical units than the word, several types of juncture are distinguished: single-bar or sustained juncture is recognized when the pitch pattern stays level within an UTTERANCE (transcribed with a single forward slash </> or a level arrow <→> ); double-bar or rising juncture is recognized when the pitch pattern rises before a silence (transcribed with a double slash <//> or a rising arrow <↗>); a terminal, double-cross, falling or fading juncture is recognized when the pitch pattern falls before a silence (transcribed with a double cross <#> or a falling arrow <↘>).

Juncture is used in ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR to describe that part of the grammar which deals with how sub-CLAUSAL units combine. It is seen in association with a theory of NEXUS – the type of SYNTACTIC relationship which obtains between the units in the juncture.