• DOI:10.1177/002383099303600306
• Corpus ID: 2538069

An Electropalatographic Study of Alveolar and Palatal Consonants in Catalan and Italian

@article{Recasens1993AnES,
  title={An Electropalatographic Study of Alveolar and Palatal Consonants in Catalan and Italian},
  author={Daniel Recasens and Edda Farnetani and Jordi Fontdevila and Maria Dolors Pallar{\`e}s},
  journal={Language and Speech},
  year={1993},
  volume={36},
  pages={213 - 234}
}

• D. Recasens, E. Farnetani, +1 author M. D. Pallarès
• Published 1 April 1993
• Linguistics
• Language and Speech

Electropalatographic data for Catalan and Italian reported in this paper reveal the existence of two categories of palatal consonants, namely, alveolopalatals ([n], [λ]) and palatals proper ([j]). All these consonants are produced with a single place of articulation and thus are not good candidates for complex segments involving a tongue front articulator and a tongue dorsum articulator. A higher degree of coupling between the primary articulator and other tongue regions for alveolopalatals and palatals than for alveolar [n] accounts for a reduced sensitivity to coarticulatory effects for the former vs. the latter. Alveolarpalatal correlations reported in this study support the notion of relative independence between different tongue articulators for non-dorsal vs. dorsal consonants. Differences in articulation and coarticulation were found for Italian vs. Catalan. In comparison with their Catalan counterparts, Italian shows the following properties: Consonants are more anterior, [n] allows less coarticulation at the alveolar zone (in line with the laminal nature of the consonant), and long alveolopalatals exhibit more contact and less coarticulation at the front palatal zone.