Acoustic evidence for gestural overlap in consonant sequences

• Published in: Journal of phonetics Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 121 - 140
• Main Author: Zsiga, Elizabeth C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Elsevier Ltd 01.04.1994; Seminar Press
• ISSN: 0095-4470; 1095-8576
• DOI: 10.1016/S0095-4470(19)30189-5

Acoustic evidence for temporal overlap of the two closure gestures in the environment VC ≠ CV was investigated. It was hypothesized that evidence of C2 would be found in the VC formant transitions and would increasingly dominate the transitions as rate (and, by hypothesis, overlap) increased. Twenty repetitions (10 at a normal rate and 10 at a rapid rate) of word pairs where the first word ended in /d/ and the second began with /p/, /t/, or /k/ were elicited in a sentence context from four subjects. F2 and F3 transitions from the midpoint of V1, to just before closure were then measured. In all environments, C2 had a clear influence on the VC formant transitions. The rate effects were less clear. For the /d ≠ k/ environment, a significant correlation was found between more prominent velar transitions and increasing ratio of vowel duration to consonant closure duration, which may be considered a measure of increasing consonant overlap. The acoustic influence of C2 on V1, suggests considerable temporal overlap of the two closure gestures, and at least for the /d ≠ k/ case, increasing overlap as a function of one strategy for increasing rate.