Haskins Publications

Number	337
Year	1981
Drawer	6
Entry Date	06/15/1999
Authors	Fowler, C. A.
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Publication	Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 46, 127-139.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0337.pdf
Abstract	A pair of experiments examines first the coarticulatory relation among certain stressed and unstressed vowels, and next the perception of coarticulated unstressed vowels. The first stud finds the acoustic properties of unstressed medial /^/ and, to a substantially lesser extent, of stressed medial /^/, to be assimilated to the properties of their flanking vocalic contexts. both initial and final flanking vowels coarticulate with medial /^/, but carryover coarticulatory effects tend to exceed anticipatory effects. In a second experiment, listeners’ manners of perceiving the coarticulated unstressed vowels of the first experiment are shown to be coupled to, or to be compatible with, the talkers’ coarticulatory strategies. In particular, perceivers hear acoustically identical vowels to be different when the vowels appear in different contexts of flanking vowels. Similarly, instances of /^/ that are acoustically different due to different coarticulatory influences on them sound the same to listeners as long as each appears in its appropriate context of flanking vowels.
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