謝國平

English

National Taiwan Normal University Repository

Anticipatory Coarticulation and the Perception of Nasality in VN Syllables

Studie~ in English Literature & Linguistics 
May 1990, pp. 2刊 .222
Anticipatory Coarticulation and the Perception 
of Nasality in VN Syllables 
John Kwock-ping Tse 
(謝國平)
1.  INTRODUCTION 
It is  a  well-known  phonetic fact  that speech  sounds  occurring in  sequence tend to 
influence  one another.  Borden  and  Harris (1 984) classified this kind of influence into 
three  types, i.e., adaption, assimilation, and  coarticulation.  Adaption is  defined as  the 
“variations in the way, in which articulators move and the extent to which cavities change 
shape, according to what phonemes are neighbors" (Borden & Harris 1984: 120).  Assimi-
lation,  is  referred  to as  an  extreme form of adaption in  which “a phone may actually 
change to to be more like its neighbors" (op cit:  130). Coarticulation, is defined, on the 
other hand, as  the  process  of two  articulators  "moving at  the  same  time for  different 
phonemes"  (op  cit:  130).  Coarticulation  differs  from adaption in  that it involves two 
articulators  (the  latter  involves  one)  and  it  also  differs  from  assimilation  in  that  it 
usually does not result in  actual sound change.  One example of coarticulation is the lip司
rou叫ng of  consonants  occurring  before  [u]  (e.g.  [~u]) ，  with  both  [k]  and  [u] 
retaining their phonetic identities.  In (C)VN sequences (C, V and N represent consonant, 
vowel and nasal  respectively), while the tongue assumes the position for the V, the velum 
begins to lower its position in  anticipation of the N, thus nasalizing the V even before the 
tongue is  ready for the articulatory gestures for the N.  In this sense, vowel nasalization 
before nasal consonants can also be considered anticipatory  coarticulation. 
Coarticulation necessarily produces allophonic variations in  one or both phones that 
participate in  the process.  Phoneticians and psycholinguists have long been interested in 
the relation between the acoustic/articulatory characteristics of these allophonic variations 
and perception.  More specifically, they are interested in  finding out whether or not these 
differences are perceptible on the perceptual level.  One of the attempts in  this regard is 
the  study of coarticulated  nasality.  Moll  and  Daniloff  (1971 ，的 reviewed in  Ali  el al. 

http://ir.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/ir/retrieve/34396/ntnulib_ja_B0202_0016_211.pdf

Anticipatory Coarticulation and the Perception of Nasality in VN Syllables

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