Manuel S Y
Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139.
J Acoust Soc Am. 1990 Sep;88(3):1286-98. doi: 10.1121/1.399705.
Languages differ in their inventories of distinctive sounds and in their systems of contrast. Here, it is proposed that this observation may have predictive value with respect to how extensively various phones are coarticulated in particular languages. This hypothesis is based on three assumptions: (1) There are "output constraints" on just how a given phone can be articulated; (2) output constraints are, at least in part, affected by language-particular systems of phonetic contrast; and (3) coarticulation is limited in a way that respects those output constraints. Together, these assumptions lead to the expectation that, in general, languages will tend to tolerate less coarticulation just where extensive coarticulation would lead to confusion of contrastive phones. This prediction was tested by comparing acoustic measures of anticipatory vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in languages that differ in how they divide up the vowel space into contrastive units. The acoustic measures were the first and second formant frequencies, measured in the middle and at the end of the target vowels /a/ and /e/, followed by /pV/, where /V/ was /i,e,a,o,u/. Two languages (Ndebele and Shona) with the phonemic vowels /i,e,a,o,u/ were found to have greater anticipatory coarticulation for the target vowel /a/ than does a language (Sotho) that has a more crowded mid- and low-vowel space, with the phonemic vowels /i,e,e,a,c,o,u/. The data were based on recordings from three speakers of each of the languages.
不同语言在其独特语音的库存以及对比系统方面存在差异。在此，有人提出这一观察结果可能对于特定语言中各种音素的协同发音程度具有预测价值。这一假设基于三个前提：（1）对于给定音素的发音方式存在“输出限制”；（2）输出限制至少部分地受到特定语言的语音对比系统的影响；（3）协同发音在某种程度上受到尊重这些输出限制的方式的限制。综合起来，这些前提导致这样一种预期，即一般来说，在广泛的协同发音会导致对比性音素混淆的地方，语言往往会较少容忍协同发音。通过比较在元音空间划分成对比单元方式不同的语言中，元音到元音的预期协同发音的声学测量结果，对这一预测进行了检验。声学测量是第一和第二共振峰频率，在目标元音/a/和/e/的中间和末尾进行测量，随后是/pV/，其中/V/为/i、e、a、o、u/。发现两种拥有音素/i、e、a、o、u/的语言（恩德贝莱语和绍纳语）对于目标元音/a/的预期协同发音比一种拥有更拥挤的中低元音空间且音素为/i、e、e、a、c、o、u/的语言（索托语）更大。数据基于每种语言的三位说话者的录音。
