Articulation of English vowels in running speech : a real-time MRI study

16,105 vowels produced by three speakers of American English were examined using real-time MRI, to provide further insights into tongue shaping and articulatory contrast in stressed and unstressed positions in fluent speech. High front vowels were found to maintain characteristic lingual postures in prosodically weak environments. Non-high vowels were articulated with a more raised dorsum and different pharyngeal constrictions in unstressed positions, compared to their stressed counterparts. The data reveal complex patterns of reduction, influenced by individual speaker vocal tract morphology, that resist simple characterization as ‘centralization’.5 page(s