The imitation of coarticulatory timing patterns in consonant clusters for phonotactically familiar and unfamiliar sequences

Abstract

This paper investigates to what extent speakers adapt to unfamiliar consonant cluster timing patterns. We exploit naturally occurring consonant overlap differences between German and Georgian speakers' productions to probe the constraints that language-specific patterns put on the flexibility of cluster articulation. We recorded articulography data from Georgian and German speakers imitating CCV clusters as produced by a German and Georgian audio model, respectively. The German participants adapted their relative overlap towards the Georgian audio model to various degrees depending on whether the cluster was phonotactically familiar to them or not. A higher degree of adaptation was observed for clusters phonotactically illegal in German. Phonotactically legal clusters showed only an intermediate degree of articulatory adaptation, even though acoustically these clusters showed a rather strong move towards the Georgian audio model in terms of the aerodynamics of the interconsonantal transition period. Georgian speakers on the other hand failed to adapt to the German audio model articulatorily and acoustically, possibly because the German cluster inventory is a subset of the Georgian inventory. This means that Georgian speakers can draw on native speaker knowledge for all clusters, which is a factor known to constrain imitation. Also language-specific cue weighting effects may partly condition the results.

Acoustic and Kinematic Correlates of Heterosyllabicity in Different Phonological Contexts

“…By contrast, in the case of gestural models of syllable structure, the fact that the increased gestural anticipation of codas is variable in the phonological contexts (geminates vs. clusters) can only be accounted for if the timing relationships between gestures within the syllable are conceived of as very general templates over which language-, context-, and possibly also speaker-specific constraints apply. As a matter of fact, this view is receiving increasing support from cross-linguistic investigation of a variety of phenomena related to the internal organization of syllables (e.g., Chen et al, 2017; Pouplier, 2015; Pouplier et al, 2020), showing the role of phonetic segmental factors in shaping the articulatory cohesion within the syllable. Gestural cohesion effects spanning syllable boundaries also call for a more gradient view of articulatory syllabification.…”

The Phonetics of Vowel Intrusion in Sgi Bara

“…This question is particularly pertinent for intrusive vowels, since such vowels, by definition, do not contrast with anything, including the absence of themselves, and so appear at first blush to be functionally deficient in an important sense. Gestural timing varies from language to language, even in otherwise identical consonant clusters (Pouplier et al, 2020), so it could be supposed that all non-phonemic vowels, even very long ones, are simply due to differing degrees of gestural overlap. But this is scarcely an explanation, and it has been suggested that inserted vowels may provide formant cues for adjacent consonants (Tabain & Breen, 2011).…”