A study of anticipatory coarticulation for French speakers and for Mandarin Chinese speakers

Liang Ma (1, 2) , Pascal Perrier (1) , Jianwu Dang (3)

1 GIPSA-AABC - GIPSA - Acoustique, Aéroacoustique, Biomécanique et Contrôle
2 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage
3 HIP/JAIST - Human Information Processing Laboratory - Japanese Advances Institute of Science and Technology [Ishikawa]

Anticipatory coarticulation is studied for two languages, French and Mandarin Chinese, within Vowel1 -Consonant -Vowel2 sequences (V1CV2 henceforth). EMMA data and acoustic signals were collected. The influences of V2 on V1 and of V2 on C are more specifically analyzed in this paper. The results showed that, for the French speakers, vowel V2 influenced the whole sequence V1CV2, while its influence was limited to the syllable CV2 for the Chinese speakers. This suggested that speech planning in French is managed beyond the size of a syllable, while the planning is limited within the syllabe for Chinese. The results demonstrated the impact of language based constraints on articulatory planning in speech.

Keywords: Coarticulation; Speech planning; Syllable

Domains: Linguistics; Neuroscience; Linguistics

Liang Ma, Pascal Perrier, Jianwu Dang. A study of anticipatory coarticulation for French speakers and for Mandarin Chinese speakers. Chinese Journal of Phonetics, 2009, 2, pp.82-89. ⟨hal-00368711⟩