The effects of syllable and sentential position on the timing of lingual gestures in /l/ and /r/

Abstract

This paper is an ultrasound-based articulatory study of the impact of syllable-position and utterance position on gesture timing in liquid consonants in American, Irish and Scottish English. Mixed effects modelling was used to analyse variation in the relative timing of the anterior and posterior lingual gestures for /l/ and /r/ in syllable-onset and coda position and in utterance-initial, medial and final position. Results showed that the component lingual gestures for /l/ and /r/ are coordinated differently in onsets and codas, across the three varieties studied; the anterior lingual gesture tends to precede the posterior gesture in syllable-onset liquids, while this gesture order is reversed for syllable-coda liquids. For /l/, but not /r/, being in utterance-initial and final position results in a significantly increased temporal distance between the two lingual gestures. For coda /r/, prerhotic vowels were found to have a significant impact on the relative timing of lingual gestures.