Effects of vowel context on the articulatory closure postures of deaf speakers

Using cinefluorography, this investigation evaluated how the bilabial and dorsal stop closure postures of 2 hearing and 5 deaf speakers varied with vowel context. The jaw and tongue body postures of the hearing and the 2 most intelligible deaf speakers altered with the identity of the following vowel. This did not occur consistently for the remaining deaf speakers. The results concur with a previous suggestion (Tye, Zimmerman, & Kelso, 1983) that some speakers who learn speech without audition may develop a different articulatory coordination than hearing speakers. Discovering these differences may lead to a general account for many of their intelligibility deficits.