Individual Variations and Gradience in English Palatalization

Authors

  • Jae-Hyun Sung University of Alberta

Abstract

Palatalization in many languages emerges as either a lexical process or a post-lexical process, in which lexical palatalization is governed by language-specific phonological rules, and post-lexical palatalization is a result of phonetic coarticulation. This study examines whether lexical and post-lexical palatalization in English manifest as distinct articulatory gestures using ultrasound imaging of 12 native speakers of American English. Comparison of the ultrasound tongue contours shows that lexical and post-lexical palatalization is articulatorily distinct, but the way such articulatory distinction is made is not uniform across speakers, showing no clear universal "palatal" gesture shared in common. Moreover, the effects of lexical information—two different types of palatalization and lexical frequency in this study—vary across different segments, words and speakers. The findings from this study provide additional empirical evidence for the lexical influence on palatalization, and add weight to the growing evidence of speaker-specific variability in speech production. Furthermore, this study suggests that speakers may construct their "individualized" palatalization grammar, resulting in non-generalizable gestural patterns.

Author Biography

Jae-Hyun Sung, University of Alberta

Department of Linguistics

Additional Files

Published

2016-08-24

How to Cite

1.
Sung J-H. Individual Variations and Gradience in English Palatalization. Canadian Acoustics [Internet]. 2016 Aug. 24 [cited 2024 Apr. 15];44(3). Available from: https://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/2915

Issue

Vol. 44 No. 3 (2016)

Section

Proceedings of the Acoustics Week in Canada

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