A Cross-Language Study of Laryngeal-Oral Coordination Across Varying Prosodic and Syllable-Structure Conditions.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to use prosodic and syllable-structure variation to probe the underlying representation of laryngeal kinematics in languages traditionally considered to differ in voicing typology (German vs. Dutch and French).

Method: Transillumination and videofiberendoscopic filming were used to investigate the devoicing gesture in German, Dutch, and French for material that compared, first, a strong versus weak prosodic condition and, second, singletons versus clusters (stop + /r/ and /l/).

Articulatory overlap as a function of voicing in French and German consonant clusters.

The effects of laryngeal specification on the timing of supra-laryngeal articulations have so far received little attention. Previous research has shown that German-but not French-mixed-voicing clusters are produced with less articulatory overlap than phonologically fully voiced clusters. Articulatory and acoustic data of labial and velar stops as simple onsets and in stop + /l/ clusters are examined to probe the causes for this cross-linguistic difference in the light of the different voicing implementations of French and German.