Recoverability constraints on gestural overlap in Georgian stop sequences

Abstract

Recent investigations of the temporal organization of articulatory gestures have found that consonants in a cluster exhibit less temporal overlap when in word-onset position than when the cluster occurs word-finally or spanning a word boundary. A possible reason for this is that substantial overlap of obstruent gestures in utterance-initial position may threaten their perceptual recoverability. Recoverability considerations may also account for results showing that a front-to-back order of place of articulation in stop–stop sequences (labial–alveolar, alveolar–velar, labial–velar) allows more overlap than the opposite order. Presumably, the recoverability of C1 is hindered if the release of C1 has no acoustic manifestation due to the presence of a more anterior C2 being coproduced in time, hiding the C1 release. Data demonstrating both these constraints on gestural patterning have previously been drawn only from English, limiting the type and position of consonant sequences. The Georgian language offers a rich inventory of consonant sequences including stop–stop sequences in initial, medial, and cross-word-boundary positions. This work is an articulator movement tracking study of two Georgian speakers producing such sequences. The results provide evidence that the sequence’s word position and the component consonants’ constriction locations both constrain the patterns of gestural overlap produced. [Work supported by NIH.]