Coarticulation in Catalan dark [l] and the alveolar trill: general implications for sound change

Coarticulation data for Catalan reveal that, while being less sensitive to vowel effects at the consonant period, the alveolar trill [r] exerts more prominent effects than [ł] on both adjacent [a] and [i]. This coarticulatory pattern may be related to strict manner demands on the production of the trill. Both consonants also differ regarding the relative prominence of the consonant-to-vowel anticipatory and carryover effects in VCV sequences: while [r] and [ł] exert much anticipatory coarticulation on the preceding vowel, carryover effects on the following vowel turn out to be more salient for [r] than for [ł]. These consonant-dependent differences in coarticulatory direction parallel the directionality patterns observed in related vowel assimilatory and glide insertion processes occurring in the Romance languages, in Early Germanic, in Old, Middle and Modern English, and in Arabic when the target consonant is not [ł] or [r] but a pharyngealized dentoalveolar.