Jaw Position in English and Swedish VCVs

B. Lindblom proposed that consonant segments have different propensities for coarticulating their jaw height with neighboring segments ("Economy of Speech Gestures" in The Production of Speech, MacNeilage, P. F. [Ed], New York: Springer-Verlag, 1983). Patricia A. Keating took issue with the experimental data presented in support of Lindblom's conclusions (see LLBA 18/2, 8403477). The issue is viewed here in more general terms: Do consonants vary contextually more than vowels, or vice versa? Experimental data on jaw height were collected for speakers of Swedish & English (N = 5 each) uttering VCV (vowel-consonant-vowel) segments. Analysis showed that alveolar segments in both languages tend to have high jaw positions. It is argued that analyses of earlier data confounded overall position with variability. In the present study, with mean position corrected for, higher segments are more variable than lower segments &, thus, consonants are more variable than vowels. Tables, Figures, References. B. Annesser Murray