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Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles: Reduction and Elaboration in Speech CommunicationBarcelona, Catalonia, Spain |
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Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles: Reduction and Elaboration in Speech CommunicationBarcelona, Catalonia, Spain |
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This study investigates the positions of tongue dorsum and jaw in the production of Italian vowels HI and /a/, in different phonetic contexts and utterance types, with the aim of assessing the patterns of coordination of the two articulators in the processes of coarticulation, reduction and compensation. The data indicate that reduction is manifested as a decreased displacement of jaw and tongue from their rest position along the high/low dimension, while C-to-V and V-to-V coarticulation is mainly induced by tongue displacements along both axes. Extensive compensatory tongue horizontal displacements in the production of reduced /a/ vowels are crucial in preserving the articulatory distance between the two vowel categories in symmetric sequences, thus counteracting the effects of reduction, whilst in asymmetric sequences, the V-to-V effects seem to overrule the compensatory movements, and, adding to reduction effects, cause a further decrease in the articulatory distance between the two vowels.
Bibliographic reference. Farnetani, Edda / Faber, Alice (1991): "Vowel production in isolated words and in connected speech: an investigation of the linguo-mandibular subsystem", In PPoSpSt-1991, paper 024.