This study tackles lateral approximant clusters in Dutch and their realization in terms of duration, F2, and intensity. Dutch has two allophones for the approximant /l/, realized as alveolar in onset position, and as velarized in coda position (Booij 1995). This implies that the alveolar realization will have a higher F2 than the velarized one (Hayward 2013). The aim of this study is to determine how clusters such as wel lieve (VL#LV) are realized, regarding duration, F2, and intensity. According to Booij (1995), in this context degemination might occur.

The experiment employed a reading task containing the target tokens in the context VL#LV and the baseline contexts onset and coda. The histogram of residuals shows two different realizations of the VL#LV cluster, both as a succession of the velarized and the alveolar approximant, and one very similar to the alveolar singleton.

Results show that clusters do not resemble the baseline contexts in terms of duration and F2. Moreover, clusters have a higher intensity than the coda context. Despite being dissimilar under many aspects to the baseline contexts, clusters still have characteristics of both. In fact, the degeminated cluster often visually resembles the onset, but the lower F2 suggests that the segment might be influenced by a residual of coda.

References

• Booij, G. (1995). The Phonology of Dutch. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Hayward, K. (2013). Experimental Phonetics. New York: Routledge.