The role of tongue position in laryngeal contrasts: An ultrasound study of English and Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Many languages make a two-way laryngeal contrast in obstruents, but the phonological and phonetic characterization of these contrasts continues to be controversial. In English, utterance-initial /b d ɡ/ stops are often phonetically voiceless. Languages like Brazilian Portuguese, however, exhibit phonetic voicing for /b d ɡ/ stops utterance-initially. This study focuses on tongue position as an articulatory correlate of laryngeal contrasts. Results of an ultrasound study show that tongue position differences are similar for English and Portuguese despite VOT differences, although English speakers show more variation. Tongue root advancement/tongue body lowering is found in both English and Portuguese /b d ɡ/ stops, compared to /p t k/ counterparts. In addition to VOT, which reflects the timing of the oral and laryngeal gestures, the tongue position during closure may be an integral part of the articulatory properties of laryngeal contrasts. Results imply that these languages have different laryngeal gestures but share a similar supralaryngeal articulatory gesture, which may be necessary to distinguish between /b d ɡ/ and /p t k/ stops with respect to supralaryngeal cavity volume.