Native speakers of Spanish and English compensate equally well for a bite block in producing vowels

Abstract

A recent detailed study [Flege et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, 212–228 (1988)] provided auditory and acoustic evidence that talkers do not compensate completely or instantly when producing vowels with a bite block. This study examined compensation physiologically. Adult native speakers of English and Spanish produced nonsense disyllables (/bVba/) in a Spanish or English carrier phrase. Glossometry was used to measure the vertical distance of the tongue from the hard palate at four sensor locations in multiple productions of the stressed vowels /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, and /u/. Even though Spanish has fewer vowel categories than English (5 vs 15), the Spanish and English subjects showed equal variability in tongue positions (standard deviations of 0.746 and 0.756 ram). The subjects in both groups showed significantly greater variability in the bite‐block than normal‐speech condition (means s.d.'s of 0.821 vs 0.722 mm). There were clear differences in the average tongue positions for Spanish and English vowels spoken normally. The eight subjects in both groups showed tongue position differences (unsigned) of only about 1 mm when producing vowels normally and with a bite block. The effect of condition on tongue positions was not significant for either group. [Work supported by NIH.]