A study of F1 coarticulation in VCV sequences.

This study investigates F1 coarticulatory patterns in a large sample of VCV sequences with 7 consonants and 2 vowels uttered by 5 Catalan speakers. Measures of the size and the temporal extent of anticipatory and carryover coarticulation were obtained for the consonantal effects during the adjacent vowels, for the vocalic effects at the consonantal period, and during each transconsonantal vowel; F1 coarticulatory patterns are interpreted in the light of coarticulation data for the jaw and for dorsopalatal contact and F2 reported in the literature. Results show that consonantal effects reflect trends in lingual and jaw coarticulation, whereas vocalic effects are mostly in agreement with jaw coarticulatory trends. This finding is consistent with the view that consonantal and vocalic gestures overlap in VCV sequences and are ruled by relatively independent articulatory subsystems.

An electropalatographic and acoustic study of temporal coarticulation for Catalan dark/l/ and German clear/l/.

Electropalatographic and F2 frequency data in /VlV/ sequences reveal more prominent C-to-V effects for Catalan dark /l/ than for German clear /l/, more so in the /i/ context than in the /a/ context, which is in agreement with the existence of high lingual requirements on the formation of two constriction places for dark /l/. German clear /l/ exerts a similar amount of F2 displacement on both vowels which may be indicative of the tongue dorsum being directed towards a target position; this is also suggested by dorsopalatal contact and formant frequency data showing less vowel-dependent variability than clear /l/ in other languages though more so than Catalan dark /l/. Salient anticipatory requirements for the implementation of /l/ in the two languages block V1-dependent carryover effects to a large extent which results in more prominent vocalic anticipation than vocalic carryover. This directionality trend in vocalic coarticulation is more obvious for Catalan dark /l/ than for German clear /l/ (in agreement with the former consonantal variety requiring more anticipation than the latter) and opposes German /l/ to clear /l/ in other languages (i.e., the less constrained /l/ variety of Spanish may favor vocalic carryover over vocalic anticipation in VCV sequences).

An EMMA study of segmental complexity in alveolopalatals and palatalized alveolars.

The goal of this paper is to test whether the palatal nasal stop [symbol: see text] occurring in several Romance languages, Hungarian and Czech, is a two-gesture, complex segment (produced with a tongue front closure and intentional tongue dorsum raising) or else a one-gesture, simple segment (articulated at the alveoloprepalatal zone with a single tongue portion including the lamina and predorsum). In order to investigate this issue, electromagnetic midsagittal articulometer data were collected on apical, laminal and dorsal movement data for Catalan [symbol: see text] and Russian palatalized alveolar /nj/ (which is known to be a complex segment); other sound classes of both languages were also recorded, namely, the simple palatal segment /j/ and the two-segmental cluster /nj/. Time lags between position maxima at the tongue front and at the tongue dorsum argue strongly in favor of [symbol: see text] being a simple segment: they were found to be considerably shorter for [symbol: see text] than for /nj/; moreover, those for /nj/ were significantly longer than those for /j/ in Russian but not so in Catalan. In conjunction with linguopalatal contact data from the literature, it is argued that a longer time lag for [symbol: see text] vs. /j/ is representative of an unintentional, transitional event resulting from the alveoloprepalatal closure release for the former consonant occurring at the alveolar zone earlier than at the prepalatal zone.

An articulatory-perceptual account of vocalization and elision of dark /l/ in the Romance languages.

This investigation seeks to understand the factors causing vocalization and elision of dark/l/ in the Romance languages. Contrary to articulatory- and perceptual-based arguments in the literature it is claimed that preconsonantal vocalization conveys the phonemic categorization of the /w/-like formant transitions generated by the tongue dorsum retraction gesture (in a similar fashion to other processes such as /[symbol: see text] /Vjn/). The evolution /VwlC/ > /VwC/ may be explained using articulatory and perceptual arguments. A dissimilatory perceptual mechanism is required in order to account for a much higher frequency of vocalizations before dentals and alveolars than before labials and velars in the Romance languages. Through this process listeners assign the gravity property of dark /l/ to a following grave labial or velar consonant but not so to a following acute dental or alveolar consonant in spite of the alveolar lateral being equally dark (i.e., grave) in the three consonantal environments. Other articulatory facts appear to play a role in the vocalization of final /l/ (i.e., the occurrence of closure after voicing has ceased) and of geminate /ll/ (i.e., its being darker than non-geminate /l/). The elision of dark /l/ may occur preconsonantally and word finally either after vocalization has applied or not. This study illustrates the multiple causal factors and the articulatory-perceptual nature of sound change processes.

Co-articulatory variability and articulatory-acoustic correlations for consonants.

This paper is an investigation of articulatory-acoustic correlations differing in degree of articulatory constraint. Data on F2 and on dorsopalatal contact (electropalatographic, EPG) were collected for the sequences /iCi/ and /aC./ with seven Catalan consonants differing in place and manner of articulation (velarised /l/, /n/, /n/, /s/, /f/, /l/, /p/). These consonants are characterised by different degrees of tongue dorsum constraint depending on their production requirements (dorsals > non-dorsals, fricatives > non-fricatives, etc.). The results showed an inverse relationship between vowel-dependent coarticulation and the degree of consonant-dependent articulatory constraint. F2 and dorsopalatal contact size were found to be positively correlated across consonants and speakers, and across consonants for each individual speaker. Correlation values were much lower for each consonant across speakers. These findings are discussed in the light of the acoustic theory of speech production and possible clinical applications are suggested.

Electropalatographic data collected with and without a face mask.

This study investigates the extent to which the use of a face mask conveys linguopalatal contact changes during speech production. Electropalatographic data from five Catalan speakers were collected for different consonants, i.e., the alveolar stop [n], the alveolopalatal stop [n] and the palatal approximant [j], in the sequences [iCi] and [aCe]. Results for [n] indicate more closure retraction in the mask versus nonmask condition occurring presumably when the mask is pressed forcefully against the face in front of the mouth. The use of the mask for [n] and [j] causes an increase in dorsopalatal contact, which reflects most likely a strategy of articulatory and/or perceptual compensation.

An electropalatographic study of alveolar and palatal consonants in Catalan and Italian.

Electropalatographic data for Catalan and Italian reported in this paper reveal the existence of two categories of palatal consonants, namely, alveolopalatals ([n], [lambda]) and palatals proper ([j]). All these consonants are produced with a single place of articulation and thus are not good candidates for complex segments involving a tongue front articulator and a tongue dorsum articulator. A higher degree of coupling between the primary articulator and other tongue regions for alveolopalatals and palatals than for alveolar [n] accounts for a reduced sensitivity to coarticulatory effects for the former vs. the latter. Alveolar-palatal correlations reported in this study support the notion of relative independence between different tongue articulators for non-dorsal vs. dorsal consonants. Differences in articulation and coarticulation were found for Italian vs. Catalan. In comparison with their Catalan counterparts, Italian shows the following properties: Consonants are more anterior, [n] allows less coarticulation at the alveolar zone (in line with the laminal nature of the consonant), and long alveolopalatals exhibit more contact and less coarticulation at the front palatal zone.

Anticipatory consonant-to-vowel coarticulation in the production of VCV sequences in Italian.

The study of the spatio-temporal interactions between contiguous segments in speech is a means for a better understanding of how segments are serially organized. This research explores the relation between a vowel and the following consonant by studying the anticipatory C-to-V coarticulatory effects by means of electropalatography. The materials were 'VCV utterances produced in isolation and in connected speech by three Italian speakers, with /a/ and /i/ as vowels and the coronals /t, d, l, z, integral of/ as intervocalic consonants. The results show that the consonants affect both the vocal tract configuration of the preceding vowel and its acoustic duration. The spatial effects increase from laterals to stops to fricatives. The tongue body position is raised during /a/ and lowered during /i/. The effects are much larger for /a/ than for /i/ and larger in connected speech than in isolated words. As for temporal coarticulatory effects, the data indicate that vowels tend to be shorter before /integral of/ than before /z/, and shorter before /t/ than before /d/ than before /l/. Spatial and temporal measurements of change in tongue body contact from vowel to the consonantal closure/constriction suggest that the consonants differ among each other in the dynamics as well as in the timing of their gestures, with ampler/longer movements (e.g., for /integral of/) starting earlier than smaller/shorter movements (e.g., for /d/ or /l/). These patterns result in smaller differences between the durations of the total VC sequences than between the individual durations of V or C segments, and suggest that intersegmental organization between vowels and following consonants may have the rhythmic function of reducing the variability of vowel-to-vowel temporal intervals.

Vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Catalan VCV sequences.

Electropalatographic and acoustical data on vowel-to-vowel (V-to-V) coarticulatory effects were obtained for Catalan VCV sequences, with the consonants representing different degrees of tongue-dorsum contact (dorsopalatal approximant [j], alveolo-palatal nasal [eta], alveolo-palatal lateral [lambda], and alveolar nasal [n]). Results show that the degree of V-to-V coarticulation in linguopalatal fronting and F2 frequency varies monotonically and inversely with the degree of tongue-dorsum contact, carryover effects being larger than anticipatory effects. The temporal extent of coarticulation also varies with the degree of tongue-dorsum contact, much more so for anticipatory effects than for carryover effects. Overall, results indicate that V-to-V coarticulation in VCV sequences is dependent on the mechanical constraints imposed on the tongue dorsum to achieve dorsopalatal closure during the production of the intervening consonant. Moreover, anticipatory effects, but not carryover effects, involve articulatory preprogramming.

Timing constraints and coarticulation: alveolo-palatals and sequences of alveolar + [j] in Catalan.

General articulatory characteristics and V-to-C coarticulatory effects for alveolo-palatals [n], [lambda] versus sequences [nj], [lj] in Catalan VCV utterances have been measured at the point of maximum alveolar contact and over time by means of dynamic palatography. Data show that the amount of V-to-C coarticulation in tongue dorsum contact varies inversely with the duration of the temporal lag between the periods of alveolar closure and palatal closure. Results support the view that coarticulation is affected by contrasting timing constraints on articulatory activity.

Place cues for nasal consonants with special reference to Catalan.

This study investigates the perceptual contributions of formant transitions and nasal murmurs to the identification of the unreleased Catalan nasal consonants [n], [n], [n] (alveolar, palatal, velar, respectively) after [a] in absolute final position. Transition and murmur patterns were synthesized and varied simultaneously and systematically by interpolating between optimal values obtained from spectrographic analysis of natural speech. Catalan subjects were asked to identify the synthetic stimuli as [n], [n], and [n]. The main findings were: (1) Although transitions provided more effective cues for place of articulation than murmurs, the murmurs did make a significant contribution to the [n]-[n] distinction. (2) The cue value of the transitions ([n] greater than [n], [n]) was inversely related to that of the murmurs ([n], [n] greater than [n]). It is concluded that static and dynamic place cues for nasals in an [aC#] context are perceptually integrated with reference to the typical pattern of production of these consonants.