Articulatory mechanisms underlying incremental compensatory vowel shortening in German

The main aim of this study was to investigate the articulatory mechanisms underlying incremental vowel shortening in German. Five speakers were recorded reading sentences with target words that contained either simplex (one consonant) or complex (two consonants) onsets and codas, respectively. Acoustic measurements showed that both onset and coda clusters induce vowel shortening. Two potential articulatory mechanisms that may cause this shortening are taken into account: (1) a compression of the vowel gesture’s plateau in words containing complex onsets or codas and/or (2) a shift of the vowel adjacent consonant towards the vowel in these tokens. Vowel plateaus were not significantly compressed in cluster words, but the CV overlap in onset cluster tokens increased indicating a shift towards the vowel. Despite the acoustic vowel shortening in words with coda clusters, there was no significant shift towards the vowel (only a trend). The degree of VC overlap also depended on onset’s manner of articulation. The results are discussed with respect to the predictions made by articulatory phonology regarding gestural timing.