In the present study we analyzed vowel variation induced by carryover
V-to-V coarticulation under the effect of pitch-accent as a function
of vowel quality (using a minimally constrained intervening consonant
to maximize V-to-V effects). We tested if /i/ is more resistant to
coarticulation than /u/, and if both vowels show increased coarticulatory
resistance in pitch-accented syllables. Our approach was unprecedented
in the sense that it involved the analysis of parallel acoustic (F2)
and articulatory (x-axis dorsum position) data in a great number of
speakers (9 speaker), and real words of Hungarian. To analyze the degree
of coarticulation, we adopted the locus equation approach, and fitted
linear models on vowel onset and midpoint data, and calculated the
differences between coarticulated and non-coarticulated vowels in both
domains. To measure variability, we calculated standard deviations
of midpoint F2 values and dorsum positions.
The results showed
that accent clearly exerted an effect on the phonetic realization of
vowels, but the effect we found was dependent on both the vowel quality,
and the domain (articulation/acoustics) at hand. Observation of the
patterns we found in parallel acoustic and articulatory data warrants
for reconsideration of the term ‘coarticulatory resistance’,
and how it should be conceptualized.