Perception of Assimilation in Consonants Clusters:A Gestural Model

Abstract

Abstract The goal of this experiment was to examine the perceptual effects of gestural overlap or coproduction on the first consonant in a cluster. The experiment was conducted using synthetic speech stimuli containing [b#d] and [d#b] consonant clusters in two word phrases. The stimuli were synthesized using an articulatory speech synthesizer according to the linguistic gestural model of Browman and Goldstein. The influence of the relative places of constriction in the cluster and the complexity of the presentation environment are discussed. Two asymmetries with respect to gestural overlap were found. First, assimilation was more readily perceived when C<sub>1</sub> was an alveolar consonant than when C<sub>1</sub> was bilabial. Second, a two-word context encouraged the perception of anticipatory assimilation to a greater degree than an environment in which the second word had been truncated leaving only the acoustic effects of consonantal coproduction on the vowel offset. The results are discussed in terms of the linguistic gestural model with special reference to the application of this framework to the description of assimilation, multiply articulated consonants, and secondary articulations.