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Coarticulation in VCV Utterances: Spectrographic Measurements S Coarticulation in VCV Utterances: Spectrographic Measurements S. E. G. Öhman Citation: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 39, 151 (1966); doi: 10.1121/1.1909864 View online: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1909864 View Table of Contents: https://asa.scitation.org/toc/jas/39/1 Published by the Acoustical Society of America ARTICLES YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN Numerical Model of Coarticulation The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 41, 310 (1967); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1910340 Spectrographic Study of Vowel Reduction The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 35, 1773 (1963); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1918816 Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97, 3099 (1995); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.411872 Control Methods Used in a Study of the Vowels The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 24, 175 (1952); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1906875 Effects of consonant environment on vowel formant patterns The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109, 748 (2001); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1337959 A model of lingual coarticulation based on articulatory constraints The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102, 544 (1997); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.419727 Received 13 September 1965 9.3, 9.7 Coarticulation in VCV Utterances: Spectrographic Measurements S. E.G. 0aMA• SpeechTransmission Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology(KTH), Stockholm,Sweden In this paper, the formant transitionsin vowel q- stop consonantq- vowel utterancesspoken by Swedish, American, and Russian talkers are studied spectrographica]ly.The data suggesta physiologicalmodel in terms of which the VCV articulationsare representedby a basicdiphthongal gesture with an independent stop-consonantgesture superimposedon its transitional portion. This interpretation necessitatesa re- evaluationof the locustheory proposed by the workersof the HaskinsLaboratories. Some conclusions about the generalnature of the neural instructionsbehind the VCV gesturesare discussed. INTRODUCTION The presentwork dealswith someof the apparently very lawful rules that describehow voiced stops are coarticulated with vowels in vowel-consonant-vowel PEECHpects: theproduction stationary involvesproperties two of fundamental phoneme reali- as- zation and the dynamic rules governingthe fusion of (VCV) context. As a preliminary illustration of the strings of phonemesinto connectedspeech. Recent type of effectsinvestigated, Fig. 1 showsa pair of VCV words chosen from the material described in more detail researchhas dealt successfullywith the acoustic de- scription of static speechsounds. The dynamics of later. In both utterances,the initial vowel is/•/ and articulation, however, have receivedmuch less atten- the consonantis/g/. The final vowel is different.It is tion, and reportsof quantitative studiesin this area are /y/in the left and/u/in the right part of the Figure. The talker is a male Swede. relatively rare. A selection of referencesis given below.•-•3 When the intervocalic consonant is inspected for changesthat might be due to the variation imposedby • R. H. Stetson,Motor Phonetics(North-Holland Publ. Co., the vowel context, the following observationpresents Inc., Amsterdam, 1951). itself immediately. The second-formanttransition in •' P. Menzerath and A. de Lacerda, Koartikulation, Steuerung the vowel precedingthe stop is rising when the vowel und Lautabgrenzung(Fred. DfimmlersVerlag, Berlin, 1933). 3L. Kaiser, "Some Propertiesof SpeechMuscles and the followingthe stopis/y/, but it is fallingwhen the vowel InfluenceThereof on Language,"Arch. N•erl. Phon. Exptl. 10, followingthe stopis/u/. Thereis alsosome variation in 121-133 (1934). the third-formant transition of the initial vowel. The 4M. Joos,"Acoustic Phonetics," Language 24, 1-136, Chap.6 (1948). articulatorymotion from the initial vowelinto the/g/, 5B. Lindblom, "SpectrographicStudy of Vowel Reduction," as mirrored by the formant transitions, is apparently J. Acoust.Soc. Am. $S, 1773-1781(1963). 0A. S. House and K. N. Stevens, "Perturbation of Vowel modifiedby the vowelthat is to.followthe/g/. Articulationsby ConsonantalContext' An AcousticalStudy," Figure 2 showsa situationthat is converseto that of J. Speech& HearingRes. 6, 111-128 (1963). Fig. 1. The final vowel was kept constanthere and the 7 p. F. MacNeilage, "Electromyographicand AcousticStudy of the Productionof Certain Final Clusters,"J. Acoust. Soc.Am. initial vowel was varied. The utterancein the left part $S, 461-463 ..(1963). of the Figure is /yd(/ and that of the right part is 8 S. E.G. Ohmanand K. N. Stevens,"Cin•radiographic Studies of Speech:Procedures and Objectives,"J. Acoust.Soc. Am. /od•/. This time, thereis a changein the formanttransi- 1889(A) (1963). tions of the final vowel. The second-formant transition 00. Fujimura, "Motion-PictureStudies of ArticulatoryMove- of the final vowel is falling when the vowel preceding ments," Mass. Inst. Technol.Res. Lab. Electron. Quart. Progr. Rept. No. 62, 197-202 (15 July 1961). •0y. Kato, "Analysisof Liquid Consonants,"J. Acoust. Soc. •' P. Ladefoged,"The Nature of GeneralPhonetic Theories," Am. $6, 1989(A) (1964). paperpresented at 16thAnn. Round Table Meeting on Linguistics n S. Inomata,"Program for ActiveSegmentation and Reduction & LanguageStudies, Georgtown Univ. (26 Mar. 1965). of PhoneticParameters," Paper B? in Proceedingsof theSpeech •3E. Fischer-J•rgensen,"Beobachtungen fiber den Zusammen- CommunicationSeminar, 1962 (SpeechTransmission Lab., KTH, hang zwischenStimmhaftigkeit und intraoralemLuftdruck," Stockholm,1963), Vol. 1; J. Acoust.Soc. Am. 35, 1112(A)(1963). Z. Phonetik16, No. 1-3, 19-36 (1963). 151 152 S. E. G. 0HMAN kc/'•ec 4 3 o -0.3 -0.2 -o.1 o o.1 0.2 0.3 -0.2 -o. 1 o o.1 0.2 0.3 Fro.1. Sound spectrograms ofthe utterances/•gy/(left) and/½ga/ (right) as spoken by a maleSwedish talker. The formant transi- tionsin the initial vowelare differentin the two cases,owing to influenceof the final vowel.The linessuperimposed on the spectrograms indicate method of measurement discussedin the text. the stopis/y/, but it is slightlyrising when the vowel Sona-Graphwith an expandedfrequency scale (0-4.500 precedingthe stopis /o/. Thus,the initialvowel in- cps approximately).The frequenciesof the second fluencesthe roedialstop-to-final vowel transition across formant were measuredin the stationary parts of the the intervocalic consonant. initial and final vowelsand at the beginningand end of In order to obtain a more detailed picture of the in- the closureof the stopconsonants. Thin lineswere drawn teraction of the vowel and the stop-consonantgestures with a pencil so as to follow the center of the second- in VCV context, a seriesof studieshas been made formant bars as seenin the spectrogramsand vertical involvingspeakers of Swedish,English, and Russian. lines were drawn at the beginningand end of the stop closure.The second-formantfrequencies were measured where the vertical lines intersected the formant lines. I. F•. TRANSITIONS' INVESTIGATOR'S SPEECH Frequenciesmeasured by this method are accurate A. Measurements within lessthan 50 cps (Ref. 15). The beginningand end of the stop-closureintervals A list of VCV "words" was constructedusing the three were determined with the aid of a number of criteria voicedstops /b/, /d/, /g/ andthe four vowels/y/, derived from the acoustic theory of stop-consonant /•/,/u/, and/u/. Theseare Swedish phoneroes? 4The production?6 The beginningof the closureis associated list contained 4X3X4=48 different words. with a substantialdecrease in amplitude of the second This material was read three times by the author in and higher formants and a downward frequency shift an anechoicchamber. A Briiel & Kja•r condensermicro- in the first formant. The end of the closureis usually phoneand microphoneamplifier, and an Ampex300 marked by a weak-burstspike and a rapid increasein taperecorder were used. The systemwas adjusted to the frequencyof the first formant. In somecases where givean essentiallyflat responseover the 20-to 10000- it is impossibleto assessthe location of the secondfor- cpsfrequency band. mant at the closureboundaries, an extrapolation rule The wordswere read in a monotoneand both syllables was adoptedthat stated that the formant wasassumed wereequally stressed. All vowelswere phonemically to move into the stop gap without changein slopefrom long.Wide-band spectrograms were then made of all its nearest observable value in the vowel. The vertical the wordsrecorded, using a Kay Electric Company lines of Fig. 1 exemplify the segmentationprocedure. •4/b/ and/g/ closelyresemble the English/b/and /g/, but the Swedish/d/isapico-dental rather than apico-alveolar. The •5B. E. F. Lindblom, "Accuracy and Limitations of Sona- vowels/y/and/•/are, by andlarge, lip-rounded versions of the GraphMeasurements," in Proceedingsof theFourth International English/i/ and /el, respectively./a/ is intermediatebetween Congressof PhoneticSciences, Helsinki 1961 (Mouton & Co., AmericanEnglish/a/and/o/. The Swedishvowels/y/and/u/ 's-Gravenhage,1962), pp. 208-213. have a narrowertongue constriction than the corresponding •6 G. Fant, AcousticTheory of SpeechProduction (Mouton & Englishvowels/i/and/u/. Co., 's-Gravenhage,1960), p. 169. COARTICULATION IN VCV UTTERANCES 153 FIo. 2. Soundspectrograms of the utterances/yd½/(left) and/ode/(right) asspoken by a maleSwedish talker. The formanttransi- tions in the final vowel are differentin the two cases,owing to influenceof the initial vowel. B. Results have beensplit into
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