Articulatory and acoustic differences between palatal and velar stops

Abstract

Many experimental studies have shown that velar consonants have a more forward place of articulation in front vowel contexts than in back vowel contexts. On some accounts, such velar fronting is basically the same process as the secondary articulation of palatalization, and furthermore, both “fronted” and “palatalized” velars are equated with the “palatal” cononants of other languages. In this study, velar stops (in English, Russian, Czech, Hungarian) are compared with palatal stops (in Czech, Hungarian) and with palatalized velar stops (in Russian) in different vowel contexts. X-ray and palatographic data from the literature show that palatalized velars are very much like velars in high front vowel context, but that both of these are very different from palatals. Acoustic analysis comparing spectra of consonant release and the following vowel agrees with the articulatory data. It also makes clear that languages with palatals also have fronted velars, differing in the distribution of energy across frequencies. These results indicate that palatalization of velars is phonetically equivalent to fronting, but that neither fronted nor palatalized velars are like the palatal consonants.