Coarticulation in its general sense refers to a situation in which a conceptually isolated speech sound is influenced by, and becomes more like, a preceding or following speech sound. There are two types of coarticulation: ''anticipatory coarticulation,'' when a feature or characteristic of a speech sound is anticipated (assumed) during the production of a preceding speech sound; and ''carryover'' or ''perseverative coarticulation,'' when the effects of a sound are seen during the production of sound(s) that follow. Many models have been developed to account for coarticulation. They include the look-ahead, articulatory syllable, time-locked, window, coproduction and articulatory phonology models.
Coarticulation in phonetics refers to two different phenomena:
*the
assimilation of the
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
of one
speech sound
In phonetics and linguistics, a phone is any distinct speech sound or gesture, regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words.
In contrast, a phoneme is a speech sound in a given language that, if swapped with another ...
to that of an adjacent speech sound. For example, while the sound of
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
normally has an
alveolar place of articulation, in the word ''tenth'' it is pronounced with a
dental place of articulation because the following sound, , is dental.
*the production of a
co-articulated consonant
Co-articulated consonants or complex consonants are consonants produced with two simultaneous places of articulation. They may be divided into two classes: doubly articulated consonants with two primary places of articulation of the same manner ...
, that is, a consonant with two simultaneous places of articulation. An example of such a sound is the
voiceless labial-velar plosive
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
found in many
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...
n languages.
The term coarticulation may also refer to the transition from one articulatory
gesture to another.
References
*Crowley, Terry. (1997) ''An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.'' 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
Phonetics
Assimilation (linguistics)
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