Limits on gestural reorganization following vowel deletion: The case of Tokyo Japanese

Abstract

The coordination of gestures in consonant clusters differs across languages and hence must be a learned aspect of linguistic knowledge. Precisely pinning down the coordination relation used in a particular language, or for a particular consonant cluster type, has been facilitated by recent research showing that coordination relations structure kinematic variation in unique ways. We apply these methods to a hitherto under-explored topic, the coordination of consonant clusters created via vowel deletion. Our case study involves fricative-fricative and fricative-stop consonant clusters resulting from the variable deletion of devoiced vowels in Tokyo Japanese. Examination of articulatory data obtained by Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) show that some consonant clusters, i.e., fricative-stop clusters, show gestural reorganization whereas other cluster types, i.e., fricative-fricative sequences, behave as if a vowel remains in place, despite the fact that the tongue dorsum movement for the vowel is absent from the articulatory record. We discuss several theoretical possibilities to account for the differential effects of vowel deletion on gestural re-organization in these environments.

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“…If full deletion ensues, we might expect gestural reorganization, which would lead to lenition in derived intervocalic contexts, yet this does not happen. Similar effects were reported by Shaw and Kawahara (2023), for instance, who analyzed gestural coordination in CVC sequences compared to CC sequences in which the intervening vowel was deleted in Japanese.…”

“…They found a blocking effect in those consonantal contexts in which vowel weakening is less frequent, with no gestural reorganization and the preservation of the temporal structure of the sequence despite deletion. One of the interpretations put forward by Shaw and Kawahara (2023) is that less consistency in an optional process of vowel deletion leads to the preservation of a weakly activated gesture that inhibits the coordination between the now-adjacent consonants.…”