Coarticulation varies by consonant identity in adult and child speech

Consonant-vowel coarticulation varies by manner of articulation: speakers coarticulate less between segments in V[stop] sequences than V[glide]. There are different approaches to modelling consonant identity effects upon coarticulation (Iskarous et al., 2013). However, these effects have not been studied in non-literate populations—young children or non-literate adults. This is relevant since literacy heightens phoneme awareness, affecting coarticulation. 40 South Bolivian Quechua speakers who were not literate in the language, 30 children (aged 5–10) and 10 adults, completed a picture-prompted word elicitation task. Coarticulation was measured between [a] and the consonants /p, t, k, kh, qh, ch, s, m, w/ in VC and CV syllables. Because the child speech apparatus poses problems for typical spectral analysis, we quantify coarticulation as the Euclidean distance between Mel frequency cepstral coefficient vectors averaged over adjacent phones (Gerosa et al., 2006). Mixed effects models predicting the Euclidean distance between adjacent phones show that all age groups are sensitive to changes in consonant manner. Adults and children restrained coarticulation more between sequences containing obstruents than glides or liquids. These results suggest that literacy and heightened phoneme awareness are not required for consonant identity to affect coarticulation.Consonant-vowel coarticulation varies by manner of articulation: speakers coarticulate less between segments in V[stop] sequences than V[glide]. There are different approaches to modelling consonant identity effects upon coarticulation (Iskarous et al., 2013). However, these effects have not been studied in non-literate populations—young children or non-literate adults. This is relevant since literacy heightens phoneme awareness, affecting coarticulation. 40 South Bolivian Quechua speakers who were not literate in the language, 30 children (aged 5–10) and 10 adults, completed a picture-prompted word elicitation task. Coarticulation was measured between [a] and the consonants /p, t, k, kh, qh, ch, s, m, w/ in VC and CV syllables. Because the child speech apparatus poses problems for typical spectral analysis, we quantify coarticulation as the Euclidean distance between Mel frequency cepstral coefficient vectors averaged over adjacent phones (Gerosa et al., 2006). Mixed effects models predicting the Euclide...