C-V coarticulation in consonants with multiple lingual constrictions

Abstract

C-V coarticulation in monosyllabic words containing initial click consonants and /i:/ vowels is investigated in Mangetti Dune !Xung with 114 fps lingual ultrasound and acoustic data collected using the CHAUSA method [Miller and Finch (2011)]. The 114 fps rate yields an image of the tongue every 9 ms (+/−4.5 ms). Vowels following clicks have three lingual gestures involving the tongue tip/blade (TT), tongue body (TB), and tongue root (TR). TT and TB constrictions carried over from the clicks merge into a single vowel constriction at consonant specific rates. The second formant (F2) distinguishes each word type through the vowel midpoint. In regression analyses, TBCL and TRCL best predict F2 for alveolar click initial words, while TTCL best predicts F2 for dental/palatal click initial words. The more open constriction is acoustically inert. In the palatal click initial word, both constrictions are equally close for some speakers, and the gestures undergo blending [Browman and Goldstein (1990)]. I argue that these patterns are prosodically controlled. Dental and palatal clicks have TB and TR gestures associated with the syllable onset. In alveolar clicks, the right edge of TB and TR gestures are aligned to the right edge of the first mora.