Fronted velars, palatalized velars, and palatals

Articulatory and acoustic characteristics of various stop consonants in Czech, Hungarian, English, and Russian are compared: velars before back and before front vowels, palatalized velars, and palatals. The articulatory data consist of X-ray tracings and palatograms taken from the literature. The acoustic data consist of LPC spectra of brief intervals at stop release and at vowel onset. These data indicate that all of these consonant types are distinct. Contextual fronting of velars is a gradient effect, less extreme than phonemic palatilization of velars. True palatals are even further forward on the palate and contrast with contextually fronted velars before front vowels. Thus these consonant types should not be collapsed by feature systems.