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

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


Consonant Dynamics: Rate- and Vowel-Dependence

Claude E. Mauk

University of Texas at Austin, USA

Many studies describe how vowel formant patterns change as a function of consonant context, stress, speaking tempo and speaking style. Test phrases juxtaposed consonants with high F2 targets with vowels with low or high F2 targets. Strong shifts of F2 targets were intended to encourage variation in F2 onsets. F2 onset values were found to be rate and context dependent, showing that like vowels, consonants behave in a dynamic way, undergoing changes as a function of timing, speaking style and vowel context. A quantitative treatment of the data indicates that F2 onsets can be accurately predicted from information on the F2 midpoint of the preceding vowel, the F2 midpoint of the following vowel, the closure duration and the F2 onset target.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Mauk, Claude E. (2003): "Consonant dynamics: rate- and vowel-dependence", In ICPhS-15, 1919-1922.