Acoustic evidence of overlap in consonant sequences

Abstract

Acoustic evidence for temporal overlap of the two closure gestures in the environment VC♯CV was investigated. It was hypothesized that evidence of C2 would be found in the VC formant transitions and would increasingly dominate the transitions as rate (and by hypothesis, overlap) increased. Twenty repetitions (ten at a normal rate and ten at a rapid rate) of word pairs where the first word ended in /d/ and the second began with /p/, /t/, or /k/ were elicited in a sentence context from four subjects. Here, F2 and F3 transitions from the midpoint of V1 to just before closure were then measured. In all environments, C2 had a clear influence on the VC formant transitions. In the d♯k environment, the velar transitions were more prominent at the rapid than at the slow rate; however, the rate effects for d♯p were less clear. The acoustic influence of C2 on V1 suggests considerable temporal overlap of the two closure gestures, and at least for the d♯k case, increasing overlap as a function of rate. [Work supported by NIH Grant HD-01994.]