Difference of articulatory movement between native and non-native consonant clusters

Abstract

We investigated the difference of articulatory movement between native and non-native consonant clusters. English has consonant clusters, but Japanese does not. Therefore, speakers chosen for comparison were native English and native Japanese speakers. Speech samples consisted of 4 words, “blat,” “bnat,” “plat,” “pnat.” In these words, /bl/ and /pl/ are English clusters, but /bn/ and /pn/ are not. We measured the movement of the tongue tip, the mandible and the lower lip by WAVE system (NDI corp.). There were remarkable differences in the mandible and the lower lip movement between native (/bl/, /pl/) and non-native (/bn/, /pn/) clusters in English speakers. Namely, with the non-native clusters the difference of the articulatory movement in the mandible and the lower lip of every utterance was quite large; however, in native clusters, the difference was quite small. For Japanese speakers it was large for all clusters. Thus, it was revealed that the articulatory movement of the mandible and the lower lip in non-native clusters was not stable in native English speakers, even though English has consonant clusters. (This study was supported by KAKENHI 15K02524, 17K02707.)