Stress effects on velic gestures

Abstract

In his cross‐language survey of oral and nasal vowel patterns, Schourup [Work. Pap. Linguist. 15, 190–221 (1973)] reported that contextual vowel nasalization is more likely to occur in stressed syllables than in unstressed syllables. This study looks at how spatial and temporal patterns of velic movement are affected by stress and finds articulatory evidence in support of Schourup's claim. Vertical movements of the velum were monitored while the (American English) speaker produced utterances with different stress patterns (mVbVb vs mVbVb; bVbVm vs bVbVm). Velic height measured at the midpoint of the vowels adjacent to the nasal consonants was significantly lower when the vowels were stressed. This pattern, however, primarily reflected temporal differences in the velic gestures due to stress rather than changes in the spatial extent of velic lowering for the nasal consonants. As an example, the velic lowering gestures for the initial /m/ in /mabab/ and /mabab/ appeared quite similar both in their timing and spatial extent, but velic raising from the low position was initiated considerably later in /mabab/ than /mabab/. These findings indicate that part of the articulatory distinction between syllables with different levels of stress is the temporal pattern of velic movement. [Work supported by NIH Grants NS‐13617 and HD‐1994.]