A COMPARATIVE INVESTIGATION OF COARTICULATION IN FRICATIVES - ELECTROPALATOGRAPHIC, ELECTROMAGNETIC, AND ACOUSTIC DATA

The principal aim of this investigation was to compare coarticulatory effects at different levels of the speech production system, in order to gain insight into the relations between the different levels. To th is end, the relative magnitudes of carryover and anticipatory coarticu lation with adjacent vowels were measured at the midpoints of the two lingual fricatives /s/ and /integral/ in two speakers each of English, French, and German. Linguopalatal contact patterns derived from elect ropalatographic recordings were compared with an analysis of the acous tic output. The results indicated, firstly, that mismatches between ar ticulatory and acoustic results are not uncommon. Secondly, and more s urprisingly, while there was no difference in the overall magnitude of coarticulatory effects for /s/ and /integral/, not all speakers showe d a predominance of the same coarticulatory direction on both fricativ es; this complicated the observed tendency for the predominance of car ryover coarticulation to be greater in German and English than in Fren ch. Two speakers were retested using comparative analyses of electropa latography and electromagnetic articulography. These two procedures ga ve a closely parallel picture of lingual coarticulatory regularities ( while complementing each other in terms of characterizing articulation ). The implications of these results for identifying language-specific coarticulatory regularities are discussed.