Control of oral closure in alveolar and velar stop consonant production

Abstract

Earlier work has shown that the lips are moving at a high velocity at the instant of oral closure for bilabial stop consonants, resulting in tissue compression. The lips may thus have virtual targets that would require them to move beyond each other. The present study examines events at the oral closure for stops produced with the tongue. Tongue movements were recorded using a magnetometer system. Four subjects participated and produced ten tokens each of VCV sequences with all possible combinations of the three vowels /i, a, u/ and the consonants /t, d, k, g/. Consistent with the results for bilabial stops, the tongue was moving at a high velocity at the instant of oral closure. The tongue movement trajectories were more complex with a larger horizontal component than the lips. For velar stops, the tongue body was usually moving forward at stop closure, with the velocity influenced by vowel context. For alveolar stops, the tongue tip horizontal movement direction depended on the preceding vowel, but also differed across subjects. Between the onset and release of the oral closure, the tongue tip and tongue body moved through a trajectory of usually less than 1 cm. [Work supported by NIH.]