One‐stage and two‐stage temporal patterns of velar coarticulation

Abstract

Previous observations of the coarticulatory spread of nasality from a nasal consonant to adjacent vowels have yielded some contradictory evidence and two contradictory hypotheses: (a) coarticulatory timing is determined by segmental content and (hi coarticulation is coordinated in time with a particular articulatory gesture. Using transillumination of the velopharyngeal port, the timing patterns of velum opening were investigated in (C)VN, (C)VVN, and (C)VVVN sequences in languages lacking contrastively nasalized vowels. It was found that all speakers used two distinct patterns of velum opening, though with different frequencies of occurrence: first, a single opening gesture of smoothly increasing amplitude, its onset aligned with the first vowel onset irrespective of intervening boundaries; and second, a two‐stage opening gesture whose absolute onset was aligned as previously but whose higher‐velocity second stage was coordinated with the oral closing gesture for the nasal consonant. Thus we may have to recognize that speakers have available two alternative production strategies.