Vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Swahili

Acoustic data from Swahili (a Bantu language with a five-vowel system) reveal interesting differences in the extent and direction of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation as compared with other languages. Utterances were VpV disyllables, including all combinations of the five vowels with stress on the first vowel, recorded by a native speaker of Swahili. Two major results emerged from the analysis: (i) Previous research on other languages has shown vowel-to-vowel coarticulatory effects across the consonant to be restricted to the vocalic transitions. The present data reveal systematic vowel-to-vowel coarticulatory influence which extends into the steady-state portion of the transconsonantal vowel. (ii) A second important cross-linguistic difference is found in examining the relationship between the magnitude and direction of these effects. The first vowel, which is stressed, is found to be more affected by the quality of the second vowel than vice versa. In Swahili, then, anticipatory effects of coarticulation exceed carryover effects. This is in contrast to Fowler (1981) in which she shows stronger carryover than anticipatory effects for VCVs in English. [Work supported by NICHD.]