Palato‐lingual contact patterns during voiced and unvoiced consonant production

The timing of the initiation and cessation of vocal fold vibrations characterizes the voiced and unvoiced stops. The results of perceptual experiments, however, have revealed that other cues, such as the duration of preceding vowels, the patterns of the formant transitions in the following vowels, and the period of stop closures, may play important roles in differentiating these cognates. Therefore, the present study is to further investigate the role of the tongue articulatory movements during voiced and unvoiced consonant production in Japanese. Three normal Japanese speakers served as the subjects. The palato‐lingual contact patterns during intervocalic consonant productions were recorded using dynamic electropalatography. The results show that the area and duration of the palato‐lingual contact are clearly larger and longer during voiceless stop productions than those during voiced cognate productions. As for fricative consonant productions, the opening of apical area during voiceless fricative produc...