Geometry, kinematics, and acoustics of Tamil liquid consonants

Tamil is unusual among the world's languages in that some of its dialects h ave five contrasting liquids. This paper focuses on the characterization of these sounds in terms of articulatory geometry and kinematics, as well as their articulatory-acoustic relations. This study illustrates the use of mu ltiple techniques-static palatography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an d magnetometry (EMMA)-for investigating both static and dynamic articulator y characteristics using a single native speaker of Tamil. Dialectal merger and neutralization phenomena exhibited by the liquids of Tamil are discusse d. Comparisons of English /I/ and /l/ with Tamil provide evidence for gener ality in underlying mechanisms of rhotic and lateral production. The articu latory data justify the postulation of a class of rhotics and a class of la terals in Tamil, but do not provide evidence in favor of a larger class of liquids. Such a superclass appears to have largely an acoustic basis. (C) 1 999 Acoustical Society of America. [S0001-4966(99)03809-6].