Lexical competition influences coarticulatory variation in French: comparing competition from nasal and oral vowel minimal pairs

Abstract

It is hypothesized that the phonological status of a phonetic feature across languages predicts patterns of coarticulatory variation. In French, vowel nasality encodes lexical contrast, e.g. cède /sɛd/ vs. saint /sɛ̃/. Vowel nasality also occurs as coarticulation from nasal consonants (e.g. scènes /sɛn/), though it is minimal in degree arguably due to pressure to maintain the contrast between phonologically oral and nasal vowels. Yet, the extent to which this constraint actively shapes coarticulatory patterns across words within French is underexplored. The present study investigates word-specific coarticulatory variation in French. One prediction is that nasal-coda words (CVNs) with a nasal vowel minimal pair competitor are produced with even less coarticulatory nasalization than CVN words that have no nasal vowel competitor, consistent with a coarticulatory constraint proposal. Yet, a competing hypothesis is that competition from CVC words creates greater confusability for CVNs and that enhanced coarticulatory cues provide robust perceptual cues about what is unique and distinctive about a CVN. Thus, an alternative prediction is that greater coarticulatory nasality will be produced on CVNs when there is a CVC minimal pair competitor. Results from 30 Metropolitan French speakers reveal that lexical competition from nasal vowel competitors predicts coarticulatory variation: CVNs with nasal vowel minimal pairs are produced with less anticipatory nasal coarticulation. Moreover, CVNs with highly frequency nasal vowel competitors are produced with even less anticipatory coarticulatory nasality. These findings have implications for the relationship between phonology and coarticulatory patterning, as well as cognitive mechanisms for lexically-conditioned phonetic variation.