Alveolar stops exhibit greater coarticulatory resistance than retroflexes and dentals in Malayalam

Abstract

Tight coronal contrasts in Malayalam geminates (V1t̪:V2 vs. V1t:V2 vs. V1t:V2) are examined in an Ultrasound study of tongue contours to understand the nature of coarticulatory resistance and aggressiveness. Degree of Articulatory Constraint (DAC) predicts that articulatory complexity mitigates the nature of coarticulatory resistance (CR) cross-linguistically. Findings from our study of Ultrasound tongue contours are contrary to the predictions of the DAC, where the expectation is that the directionality of CR and aggressiveness will be Vt̪:V < Vt:V < Vt:V. We find that the order of CR is Vt:V < Vt̪:V < Vt:V. Greater variability in tongue constriction location in retroflex and dentals is found compared to alveolars. Low neighborhood density alveolars exhibit low contextual adjustments even at the constriction. This is a consequence of greater articulatory complexity. Malayalam alveolars are distributionally restrictive compared to dental and retroflex places of articulation. Alveolars in Malayalam have low neighborhood densities which may indeed govern coarticulatory resistance and aggressiveness of this place of articulation. These findings have been corroborated in an acoustic study of Malayalam stops (Dutta et al., 2019). We discuss the implications of our findings for DAC and propose that sparse lexical representation coerces coarticulatory resistance in tight coronal place contrasts.