A phonemic-response priming experiment was conducted to investigate the extent to which carryover vowel-to-vowel coarticulation is caused by cognitive mechanisms, as opposed to physical constraints on articulator movement. On experimental trials the first vowel in a two-vowel sequence was planned-but not articulated-before the second vowel was produced. Contrary to hypothesis, significant quasi-dissimilatory effects on vowel formants were observed between the unproduced and produced vowels.

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... e results suggest that there is a speech-planning mechanism restricting the extent of carryover vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. Drawing upon similar findings in oculomotor and reaching studies, this report proposes a dynamical field model of vowel planning with inhibition between contemporaneously planned gestures. The model can be extended to account for cross-linguistic and interspeaker variation in coarticulation.