Transconsonantal coarticulatory patterns in VCV utterances: Effects of a bite block

Abstract

The concept of coordinative structures, or articulatory synergies, envisions a collection of articulators organized to achieve a specific articulatory goal or acoustic goal. The mandible figures prominently in concepts of articulatory synergies because of its potential interaction with labial and lingual shaping of the vocal tract. What happens to these hypothesized synergies when one component is taken out of the collective? Bite block articulation is a common experimental approach to eliminating the jaw from its synergistic role in articulation, and studies have shown that the speech mechanism is able to reorganize its target configurations almost immediately when speaking with a fixed jaw. In the current study we examine vowel-to-vowel, transconsonantal effects with and without a bite block. Although there is one study [Sussman, Fruchter, and Cable, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (1995)] showing stability of coarticulatory effects in biteblock conditions, that conclusion was based primarily on locus equations. In the current study, we hypothesize that more traditional acoustic measures of right-to-left and left-to-right coarticulation will show that reducing an articulatory synergy by holding one of its components constant will result in different-from-typical coarticulatory behaviors. [Work supported by NIDCD Award No. DC 000319.]