An Electropalatographic study of Vowel-to-Consonant coarticulation in Greek

The technique of electropalatography (Reading EPG system) is used in this study to examine coarticulatory effects from vowels on consonants involving different degrees of articulatory constraint in their production. The relationship between random (i.e., token-to- token) variability, degree of articulatory constraint and coarticulatory propensity is investigated. The speech material consisted of real words containing Vowel-Consonant-Vowel (VCV) sequences with V = /i, a/ and C = /p, t, s/. The results confirmed an inverse relationship between coarticulatory propensity and articulatory constraint during the production of the consonant. Coarticulatory effects on the tongue dorsum were found to decrease in the order pts, i.e., from the least to the most constrained gesture. Differential behaviour was observed for the tongue tip/blade and suggested that coarticulatory variability is also constrained by language specific requirements