Coarticulation

Coarticulation plays an important part in the process of speech production as it allows for a smooth flow of everyday conversation. This process requires the articulators to move at fast speeds as certain points or targets are required to be reached for phonemes to be produced. Due to the speed at which the articulators move from one target to another the motion of articulators will overlap. This overlapping motion is called coarticulation. That is the how articulators affect each other during the movement otherwise known as transition from one target to another. Coarticulation is influenced by a number of parameters. Firstly the distances the articulators need to move in the given amount of time in order to reach the required targets are not the same for all phonemes. The differences create an overlapping motion. Since phonemes are usually spoken in words as syllables and are not usually said by themselves coarticulation can occur in the production of speech sounds.

The movement of articulators has a great influence on coarticulation. Articulatory inertia is caused by the articulator's ability to move and its weight. Larger articulators move at a slower rate than small articulators and tend to have a smaller ability to move freely. When two different articulators move, the inertia will cause them to reach their distance at different times. Sometimes there is not enough time given for the articulator to reach its goal and target undershoot will occur. Target undershoot can occur in both vowels and consonants. Coarticulation occurs here since the articulator needs to move a big distance in order to reach its target between phonemes. Since the articulators are overlapping one another they will also affect the sounds that are next to each other. This can occur since phonemes have no boundaries and are able to flow from one to the other. When distance is combined with inertia we can see that coarticulation will occur most often during the production of syllables of words.

The overlapping of the articulators affects the phonemes that are created in speech production especially since phonemes have no acoustic boundaries, except for short pauses that may occur in speech, as they are spoken in words as syllables. The outcome is consonants in syllables will affect neighboring vowels and consonants. The same goes for vowels and these will have an affect on surrounding consonants and vowels.

Coarticulation affects consonants and vowels differently. For example consonants will coarticulate most in languages where there are less places to create speech sounds. Such languages have more use for coarticulation as it is easy to create confusion for the speaker. The speaker will have a greater need for coarticulation and will need to use more articulators to compensate for the confusion. Vowels will coarticulate most in languages that require little use of vowels or have a small number of vowels in their speech. Like consonants the speaker needs to make up for the small number of vowels used when speaking. Fronting and height of vowels are also taken into consideration in coarticulation of vowels. These places of articulation are useful in differentiating sounds where languages have a small number of vowels. Coarticulation of vowels is usually seen on acoustic representations as formants. These formants can show the how vowels affect other vowels or semivowels as well as resonant phonemes.

Therefore we can see that the greatest chance of coarticulation occurring is when there is a large inventory of phonemes in a languages. The least chance of coarticulation occurring is when there is a large chance that the speaker or listener will be confused by the speech sounds. This usually occurs in languages that have a enormous variety of phonemes that are similar in sound.