ARTICULATORY FEATURES INFLUENCING REGRESSIVE PLACE ASSIMILATION IN GERMAN

Marion Jaeger & Phil Hoole
Institut für Phonetik und Sprachverarbeitung

ID 1472
[full paper]

Within current phonological theories the typological patterns of regressive place assimilation are treated as the consequence of interactions among constraints that have acoustic-perceptual teleologies. Little is known, however, about the articulatory patterns underlying the typology of regressive place assimilation. Our current EMA study aims to investigate these patterns. Specifically, the timing and magnitude of tongue tip, lower lip, and tongue back movements of C1C2 productions across word boundaries in German will be studied. The following factors were controlled: manner of articulation of C1, and place of articulation of C2, and lexical factors. The results provide evidence for a greater reduction of tongue tip movements in function as compared to content words. Reduction of tongue tip movements was particularly likely in function words with /n#k/ clusters. In addition, this word pair had a high co-occurrence frequency. With regard to C1C2 overlap results werde mixed and warrents further investigations.