Coarticulation and Vowels

Coarticulation and Vowels

Coarticulation and Sequences

  • Coarticulation: The articulation of two or more speech sounds together, so that one influences the other.

  • Double Articulations:

    • Simultaneous closure at two places of articulation.

    • Identical manner of articulation.

    • Each component has the same rank.

    • Example: Labial velar plosive (closure at lips and velum).

    • Another example: combining a bilabial approximate with a velar approximate (labial velar approximates).

  • Secondary Articulation:

    • Adding a secondary feature to a primary articulation.

    • Examples: labialization, palatalization, velarization, pharyngealization, and nasalization.

    • These often contrast with the plain version.

  • Anticipatory Coarticulation:

    • Anticipating a phone or segment that’s coming next, which affects the articulation of the current segment.

    • Example: "two two two," where the rounded vowel is anticipated during the alveolar stop.

  • Carryover Coarticulation:

    • The influence of a previous segment on the current one.

    • Example: Voiceless carryover, where the voicelessness of a stop carries over to the following segment (e.g., "price," "twice" in English).

  • Assimilation:

    • Phones becoming more alike in a sequence.

    • Phonetically, it is called coarticulation, and phonologically, it is called assimilation

  • Homorganic Sequences:

    • Articulated at the same place of articulation.

    • Special case: Geminates (often transcribed with two identical segments or with a long diacritic).

    • Geminates involve maintaining the closure for a longer duration, particularly in stops

  • Affricates:

    • Two manners of articulation begin with a stop and release into a fricative (e.g., alveolar affricate).
      Examine geminate sounds:

  • Finnish speakers prolong the lateral gesture.

  • Bhutanian Malay has contrast of initial geminates with hyper articulation, stronger articulation.

  • Heterorganic Sequences:

    • Different articulators are used in successive sounds.

    • Example: "back part" (velar followed by bilabial).

    • Using different parts of the tongue (blade vs. dorsum) can also be heterorganic.

  • Contiguous Sequences:

    • Adjacent articulatory zones or sub-zones.

    • Example: "pew" (bilabial transitioning to palatal).

    • The velar sound can be fronted due to coarticulation because of competition for the tongue dorsum, captured using the advancement diacritic.

Vowels

  • Speech sounds produced with no major stricture in the vocal tract.

  • Characterized by a relatively open articulation.

  • Described by valve quality:

    • refers to changes in the shape of the supralaryngeal vocal tract.
      *You can not use same parameters as consonants when describing valve quality

  • Articulatory Factors for Vowel Quality:

    • Tongue body (tongue dorsum) position, height, backing, and advancement

    • Lips: width, height, protrusion (rounding)

    • Jaw opening: subsidiary articulator that carries the tongue dorsum

    • Tongue root advancement, larynx raising or lowering

  • fMRI images of Vowels:

    • heed: tongue body very much fronted with a large cavity behind the front valve

    • Paul: Much larger cavity in front of the constriction, a much narrower smaller cavity here

    • hood: speaker raises their tongue body to this area at the back or toward the velum, the soft palate, hooed. Lip rounding too.

  • Articulatory Parameters:

    • Aperture or Opening (vowel height): How open is the supralaryngeal vocal tract?

      • Close = High

      • Open = Low

    • Backing: Where is the constriction located (front, central, back)?

    • Rounding: Are the vowels rounded or unrounded?

    • Length: How long is the vowel?

      • Long = Tense

      • Short = Lax

    • Dynamics:

      • Monophthongal: Single target

      • Diphthongal: Two distinct targets (gliding between two vowel qualities)

      • Triptongs: Three vowel qualities (typical of non-rhotic varieties of English)

        • inherently long vowels

IPA Vowel Chart

  • Stylized configuration with a vertical dimension (aperture) and horizontal dimension (backing).

  • Aperture: close to open (top to bottom).

  • Backing: front to back (left to right).

  • Pairs of vowels: unrounded (left), rounded (right).

  • Schwa: mid-central vowel.

  • Upside-down "a": near-open central vowel (e.g., "heart" in Australian English).

Cardinal Vowels

  • Developed by Daniel Jones as auditory models of vowel quality.

  • Arbitrary landmarks, not tied to any particular language.

  • Primary cardinal vowels define the outer limits of the vowel space. Should be a universally audible vowel if spoken correctly.

  • Primary Cardinal Vowels:

    • close front unrounded is Cardinal 1 (ee)

    • open back unrounded vowel (ah)

    • Determined auditorily.

  • Demonstrated via auditory space (listen to Peter Ladefoged doing cardinal vowels, Daniel Jones doing cardinal vowels.

  • Secondary Cardinal Vowels

    • Different combinations of rounding.

    • Move into the vowel space.

    • Rounding causes a vowel quality change.

  • Lip Rounding:
    *unrounded well coupled with rounded between primary and secondary cardinals

    • In open vowels, it is less obvious auditorily.

  • Front vowels tend to sound further apart than back vowels.

  • The contrast between open vowels is less apparent than between closed vowels.

  • A language with a rounded vowel will prefer it to be back.

  • Primary cardinals represent more common vowels.

  • Secondary cardinals represent less common vowels.

  • There is no invariant relationship between tongue position and auditory quality