Volume 33, Issue 1

Descriptive autority analyses of continuous texts in German have shown that word-final alveolar plosives are frequently assimilated to following labials and velars. On the basis of illustrative data this experimental investigation deals with the question of whether the alveolar movement is completely eliminated by articulatory control or whether coarticulation arises which involves the preservation of the articulatory gesture without a perceptual consequence. As regards the experimental procedure, a method of dynamic palatography is used and described here, also in respect of its limitations. Material from one subject is then discussed and the direction of future research in this area outlined with regard to new experiments and the necessary instrumental facilities. Finally, the special articulatory and physiological status of alveolar consonants in general is considered as well as ensuing consequences for sound change.

The mechanism for the acoustic encoding of emotions was analyzed by means of two X-ray films containing neutral and emotional variants (anger, hate, sadness, joy, tenderness, irony) of six Hungarian phrases. Each attitude is expressed by an articulatory pattern peculiar to it. This oral gesture can be seen as superimposed on the (ideal) neutral articulation. Each concrete sound necessarily contains two pieces of information differing profoundly both at the level of content (conceptual vs. preconceptual) and of expression (arbitrary linguistics vs. non-arbitrary prelinguistic encoding). In some cases, this double encoding is reflected in ambiguous and contradictory lingual articulation.

This article, the seventh in a series of statistical analyses of a surreptitiously recorded corpus representing 50 half-hour conversations with cultivated middle-class Parisians, deals with the acoustic and articulatory parameters of the present-day product of the neutralization of the former /ε/-/œ/ opposition. A variety of techniques are used to study the question (the measurement of spectrograms, a synthetic speech experiment and high-speed full-face and profile motion pictures). The pronunciation patterns of a representative group of speakers show that the change is now consummated on that level, but that preference patterns are somewhat more conservative. It is furthermore demonstrated that the phenomenon has not developed through the gradual abandonment of /œ/ in favor of /ε/ but rather by a rapprochement of the features of both, with the resulting loss of distinctive lip position.

The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive power of recent theories of aspiration. These theories (lag of voicing) predict that aspirated sounds will be perceived as unaspirated in word-final position, as in the case of Korean stops. Contrary to the predictions of these theories, our experiment showed that in final position in Hindi stops, such a neutralization between unaspirated and aspirated stops was absent. What is even more interesting is that the intelligibility of aspirated sounds in Hindi was the highest on the perception scale while unaspirated had a lower rank.