Acoustic evidence for gestural overlap in consonant sequences

Abstract

Acoustic evidence for temporal overlap of the two closure gestures in the environment VC ≠ CV was investigated. It was hypothesized that evidence of C 2 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. F 2 and F 3 transitions from the midpoint of V 1 , to just before closure were then measured. In all environments, C 2 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 C 2 on V 1 , 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.