Effects of syllable position and place of articulation on secondary dorsal contrasts: An ultrasound study of Irish

Abstract

Secondary articulations like palatalization and velarization are used contrastively to distinguish phonemes and word meanings in a number of languages. Cross-linguistically, these contrasts are often absent in syllable codas and labial consonants. We investigate whether the loss of palatalization and velarization in codas and labials may have a source in articulatory reduction and/or coarticulation in these contexts. On the basis of ultrasound data from Irish — a language with robust and pervasive contrasts between palatalization and velarization — we find that secondary articulations in Irish stops are less articulatorily distinct in codas, particularly for dorsals and labials. This is in part due to increased coarticulation between vowels and velarized consonants in these contexts. These findings are largely in accord with past findings for Russian, and suggest that the typology of secondary dorsal contrasts is grounded in articulatory as well as perceptual asymmetries.