Tenseness in vowels: an ultrasonic study

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Phonetics
• Acoustic analysis

Background:

• Understanding the dynamic positioning of the anterior pharyngeal wall (APW) is crucial for speech production.
• Vowel tenseness and surrounding consonants significantly impact articulatory configurations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how vowel tenseness and coarticulation affect the anterior pharyngeal wall (APW) position.
• To explore the relationship between articulatory features and APW movement during speech.

Main Methods:

• Utilized ultrasonic imaging to measure the distance between the external neck wall and the APW.
• Analyzed measurements in the vocalic segment of 50 consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables.
• Included 5 tense and 5 lax vowels from Standard American English.

Main Results:

• APW position is determined by a combination of tongue height, frontness, vowel tenseness, and consonant coarticulation.
• Tense vowels demonstrated significant APW advancement compared to lax vowels with similar tongue height and frontness.
• Coarticulation effects on APW position varied based on consonant voicing and place of articulation.

Conclusions:

• Vowel tenseness is a key factor in anterior pharyngeal wall (APW) positioning.
• Articulatory phonetics and coarticulation play significant roles in shaping the vocal tract.
• Findings offer insights into distinctive feature theory and speech production mechanisms.