Harvey M. Sussman
Dept. of Linguist. and Speech Commun., Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
Jadine Shore
David Fruchter
Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
Syllable-final stops have different coarticulatory and perceptual properties compared to syllable-initial stops. Locus equations have previously been used to acoustically characterize place of articulation for initial stop consonants [H. Sussman, H. McCaffrey, and S. Matthews, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 1309--1325 (1991) and H. Sussman, K. Hoemeke, and F. Ahmed, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 94, 1256--1268 (1993)]. Since locus equations also encode degree of coarticulation, they might also provide an adequate phonetic description of VC events for final /b/, /d/, and /g/ following varied vowel contexts. Each of ten speakers, five male and five female, produced three repetitions of 90 CVC tokens. For each final stop (/b,d,g/) there were ten medial vowels and three initial consonants---bVb, dVb, gVb, bVd, dVd, gVd, bVg, dVg, gVg. Three points along the second formant were measured---F2 onset (Hz), F2 midvowel (Hz), and F2 offset (Hz). Offset locus equations (VC) were generated for each syllable-final stop place, both across initial consonantal contexts and as a function of each initial stop. In addition, 3-D plots were generated to determine how F2 onset (x), midpoint (y), and offset (z) could acoustically capture and differentiate lexical contrasts. [Work supported by NIDCD.]