Velar height and sentence length: Declination

Abstract

Considerable evidence attests to the phenomenon of F0 declination during the course of an utterance. Recently, the question of whether upper articulators might show declination‐type effects has been raised for the jaw [E. V.‐Bateson and C. A. Fowler, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 84, S128 (1988)]. In previous studies, lower velar peaks were noted in sentence‐final than ‐initial syllables, prompting a systematic investigation of velar declination. Thus peak velar height for early and late syllables in natural and reiterant‐speech sentences of from three to nine syllables has been examined. Velar position and acoustic data were collected from three speakers of American English. Differences in velar height were examined with respect to number of syllables and acoustic duration. Possible interactions between declination‐type processes and factors such as stress were also studied, since stress has been shown to have a strong influence on velar movement [R. A. Krakow, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 82, S17 (1987); J. Vassiere, Phonetica 45, 122–139 (1988)]. [Work supported by NIH Grants DC‐00121 and RR‐05596 to Haskins Labs.]