Coarticulatory resistance in Assamese stops

Abstract

The nature and extent of coarticulation and coarticulatory resistance of speech segments have been found to be dependent on the size, shape, and density of contrasts, in addition to neighborhood densities of segment sequences. While high density of contrasts leads to high coarticulatory resistance, low density of contrasts leads to low coarticulatory resistance. Assamese, an Indo-Aryan (IA) language, unlike the other IA languages which exhibit a two-way coronal place contrast, contains only an alveolar stop. Due to the relative low density of the alveolar, we hypothesize that the Assamese alveolar stops will exhibit low coarticulatory resistance compared to the velar counterpart. We use locus equations to analyze the coarticulatory effects. First order locus equations were used in a [aCV_] context, where C is a labial, alveolar, or velar stop, while the following V is one of the corner vowels /a,i,u/. Unlike the hypothesis, the least amount of coarticulatory resistance is shown by the velars and the alveolars show greater resistance compared to the velars and the labials. This poses an interesting question because it has been stated that mostly the slopes are seen to be order of labial, then velar and then alveolar. The possible explanations are discussed.The nature and extent of coarticulation and coarticulatory resistance of speech segments have been found to be dependent on the size, shape, and density of contrasts, in addition to neighborhood densities of segment sequences. While high density of contrasts leads to high coarticulatory resistance, low density of contrasts leads to low coarticulatory resistance. Assamese, an Indo-Aryan (IA) language, unlike the other IA languages which exhibit a two-way coronal place contrast, contains only an alveolar stop. Due to the relative low density of the alveolar, we hypothesize that the Assamese alveolar stops will exhibit low coarticulatory resistance compared to the velar counterpart. We use locus equations to analyze the coarticulatory effects. First order locus equations were used in a [aCV_] context, where C is a labial, alveolar, or velar stop, while the following V is one of the corner vowels /a,i,u/. Unlike the hypothesis, the least amount of coarticulatory resistance is shown by the velars and the alveo...