Word-level asymmetries in consonant articulation

A variety of studies have shown articulatory asymmetries between consonants which are initial vs. final in their syllable and/or word; however, the asymmetry is not always found and its nature is not clear. In this paper we investigate some factors that might seem to make the asymmetry less than universal, using dynamic electropalatography. First, we considered a range of consonants, to see whether only some classes of consonants show the asymmetry, and found it for the non-sibilant non-continuants /t/ /d/ /k/ /n/ and /l/, but not for sibilant fricatives, though all consonants showed an asymmetry in acoustic duration. Second, we considered how the wordlevel asymmetry interacts with phrase-level effects on articulation, and found that it can be countered by an independent effect of final position in utterance. Third, a pilot study considered whether a word-level asymmetry can be distinguished from a syllable-level asymmetry, but no systematic or consistent differences were found.