Coarticulation and contrast: Neighborhood density conditioned phonetic variation in French
نویسندگان
چکیده
Phonological neighborhood density (ND) conditions variation in a number of acoustic phonetic properties of words. For example, previous research has shown greater hyperarticulation and greater nasal coarticulation in high-ND English words than in low-ND words. Here, we investigate the effects of ND on vowel hyperarticulation and vowel nasality (coarticulatory and contrastive) in French. Acoustic analysis of elicited French data revealed some ND patterns that paralleled those reported for English, but also some language-specific patterns. In particular, we found greater hyperarticulation for oral vowels in Hi-ND vs. Lo-ND words, but greater centralization for nasal vowels in Hi-ND vs. Lo-ND words. However, we did not find ND effects for vowel nasality in either coarticulatory or contrastive contexts. We discuss both the ND effects found and the apparent lack of others in terms of the languagespecific relationship between oral and nasal vowels and between coarticulatory and contrastive nasality in French.
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