Abstract
It has been claimed that patterns of regressive place assimilation in consonant clusters are attributable to the ‘inherent velocities’ of the primary oral articulators involved. The present study used articulatory data from Moroccan Arabic to evaluate whether there were reliable differences in peak velocity or measured stiffness based on primary oral articulator. Evidence for such differences was limited. We also evaluated whether the degree of overlap in clusters could be predicted by the combination of articulators in a C1C2 cluster. Some significant differences were found, but they did not align with the assumed differences in inherent rapidity of the articulators. Lastly, we evaluated whether the amount of overlap was influenced by the relative peak velocities of the closing gestures of two-consonant clusters. It was not. However, when the dynamical control parameter of stiffness of the same closing gestures was used instead of peak velocity, a robust effect on overlap was found. This result suggests that the relative settings of the control parameter of stiffness influence degree of overlap in a cluster, not peak velocity, which is too subject to contextual effects such as movement amplitude.
Highlights
IntroductionTwo consonants in a cluster will agree in place, with the first consonant changing to match the place of the second (see, e.g., Jun, 2004, and references therein)
In many languages, two consonants in a cluster will agree in place, with the first consonant changing to match the place of the second
The difference of the vand k′ values of C1 and C2 were calculated to determine the PV Difference and Stiffness Difference in each token, as in (5) and (6), meaning that positive values indicate that C1 had a greater vor k′ value than that of C2, and negative values indicate that C1 had a smaller vor k′ value than that of C2
Summary
Two consonants in a cluster will agree in place, with the first consonant changing to match the place of the second (see, e.g., Jun, 2004, and references therein). Jun (2004) proposes that, given a cluster containing two consonants VC1C2, C1 is more likely to assimilate to the place of C2 when there is more overlap between the articulations of the consonants than when there is less. The first component is that overlap is important in explaining patterns of assimilation because contemporaneous articulator movements of C2 and C1 potentially negatively influence the perceptibility of acoustic information about the place of C1 (formant transitions) during the transition from the vowel to C1. These four cases can be summarized by saying that when C1 is more rapid compared to C2, there is more overlap, and when C2 is more rapid compared to C1, there is less overlap
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