ANTICIPATORY CONSONANT-TO-VOWEL COARTICULATION IN THE PRODUCTION OF VCV SEQUENCES IN ITALIAN

The study of the spatio-temporal interactions between contiguous segme nts in speech is a means for a better understanding of how segments ar e serially organized. This research explores the relation between a vo wel and the following consonant by studying the anticipatory C-to-V co articulatory effects by means of electropalatography. The materials we re 'VCV utterances produced in isolation and in connected speech by th ree Italian speakers, with /a/ and /i/ as vowels and the coronals /t, d, l, z, integral/ as intervocalic consonants. The results show that t he consonants affect both the vocal tract configuration of the precedi ng vowel and its acoustic duration. The spatial effects increase from laterals to stops to fricatives. The tongue body position is raised du ring /a/ and lowered during /i/. The effects are much larger for /a/ t han for /i/ and larger in connected speech than in isolated words. As for temporal coarticulatory effects, the data indicate that vowels ten d to be shorter before /integral/ than before /z/, and shorter before /t/ than before /d/ than before /l/. Spatial and temporal measurements of change in tongue body contact from vowel to the consonantal closur e/constriction suggest that the consonants differ among each other in the dynamics as well as in the timing of their gestures, with ampler/l onger movements (e.g., for /integral/) starting earlier than smaller/s horter movements (e.g., for /d/ or /l/). These patterns result in smal ler differences between the durations of the total VC sequences than b etween the individual durations of V or C segments, and suggest that i ntersegmental organization between vowels and following consonants may have the rhythmic function of reducing the variability of vowel-to-vo wel temporal intervals.