Positional targets for lingual consonants defined using electromagnetic articulography.

The study examined the positional targets for lingual consonants defined using a point-parameterized approach with Wave (NDI, Waterloo, ON, Canada). The overall goal was to determine which consonants had unique tongue positions with respect to other consonants. Nineteen talkers repeated vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) syllables that included consonants /t, d, s, z, , k, g/ in symmetrical vowel contexts /i, u, a/, embedded in a carrier phrase. Target regions for each consonant, characterized in terms of x,y,z tongue positions at the point of maximum tongue elevation, were extracted. Distances and overlaps were computed between all consonant pairs and compared to the distances and overlaps of their contextual targets. Cognates and postalveolar homorganics were found to share the location of their target regions. On average, alveolar stops showed distinctively different target regions than alveolar fricatives, which in turn showed different target region locations than the postalveolar consonants. Across talker variability in target locations was partially explained by differences in habitual speaking rate and hard palate characteristics.