Consonantal and vocalic gestures in the articulation of italian glide /w/ at different syllable positions

Abstract

Glides have been a challenging sound category from both a phonological and phonetic perspective and this is especially true for Italian. In this language four different glides can be distinguished based on their position in a syllable (pre or post-vowel), grouped together as either "semi-consonanti" (/j/ and /w/) or "semi-vocali" (/i̯/ and /u̯/). As most studies on Italian glides have utilized acoustic data, there is little information on actual articulatory characteristics. In this paper, we present a detailed kinematic analysis of both consonantal and vocalic gestures involved in the production of one specific glide (/w/) using 3D electro-magnetic articulography (EMA). The findings allow us to distinguish between different theoretical frameworks on the nature of glides and interpret possible changes in their pro-duction in relation to variations in speech rate and position in the syllable