Description of the articulatory gestures concerned in the production of the sounds /r/ and /l/

Purpose

Analyze the data of the nature articulatory of liquid consonants and the coarticulation of different contexts vowel production with the use of ultrasound with a focus on the Gestural Phonology in the speaker typical adults from the Brazilian Portuguese.

Methods

Participated in the survey five adults, aged 25 and 37 years. Three pairs of words were selected with the sounds /r/ and /l/, in Onset Medial, in different vowel contexts: /a/, /i/, /u/. The recordings of tongue images were made with the Portable Ultrasound Model DP- 6600. All the words were represented in images included in the same vehicle sentence. The articulatory gestures were captured by the ultrasound and analyzed by AAA software (Articulate Assistant Advanced). The images of articulatory gestures viewed in ultrasound corresponded of frames to the maximum elevation of the tongue tip in the production of /l/ and /r/.

Results

/r/ and /l/ have two gestures simultaneous: tip and body of tongue. The vowel /i/ following the /r/ and vowel /u/ following the /l/ showed higher degree of constriction in the tip and body of tongue, respectively.

Conclusion

The segments researched present doubles gestures of tongue. The coordination of gestures of /r/ and /l/ associated with different vowel contexts reveals different gestural configurations.

Speech; Speech acoustics; Ultrasonics; Adult; Speech, language and hearing sciences