15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


The Front and Sub-Lingual Cavities in Coronal Stops: An Acoustic Approach to Volume Estimation

Svante Granqvist (1), Johan Sundberg (1), Elisabet Eir Cortes (2), Josefina Larsson (2), Peter Branderud (2)

(1) Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
(2) Stockholms Universitet, Sweden

The subapical cavity has been shown to play a significant role in determining the F-patterns of articulations made with a raised tongue blade. This paper reports quantitative data on subapical volumes for Swedish dental and retroflex voiced stops. These estimates were made by means of an acoustic method using pulse excitation of the front cavity. EPG was employed to determine the place of articulation of the consonants. Front cavity volumes were found to vary in an approximately linear fashion as a function of place of articulation. For retroflex consonants, volumes ranged between 2 and 11 cm3. A lawful second-order effect was observed with front vowel contexts tending to shift the pattern towards smaller, and back vowels towards larger volumes.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Granqvist, Svante / Sundberg, Johan / Cortes, Elisabet Eir / Larsson, Josefina / Branderud, Peter (2003): "The front and sub-lingual cavities in coronal stops: an acoustic approach to volume estimation", In ICPhS-15, 941-944.