Temporal patterns of coarticulation: lip rounding

Abstract

According to some theories, anticipatory coarticulation occurs when phones for which a feature is unspecified precede one for which the feature is specified, with consequent migration of the feature value to the antecedent phones. Carryover coarticulation, on the other hand, is often attributed to "articulatory sluggishness." In this paper, EMG evidence is provided that this formulation is inadequate, since the beginning of EMG activity associated with vowel lip rounding is independent of measures of the acoustic duration of adjacent lingual consonants. We suggest that the vowel-rounding gesture simply co-occurs during predictable intervals with portions of preceding and following lingual consonant articulations.