Absolute and Proportional Undershoot Values as Indices of Coarticulation

The aim of this paper is to suggest an index of coarticulation, proportional undershoot values, given the observation that absolute undershoot within a language tends to be proportional to target-locus difference. The target-locus proportionality predicts that a large difference between the consonant locus and the vowel target will result in a large amount of vowel undershoot, while a small difference a small amount of vowel undershoot. It turns out that the proportional undershoot is a potentially more appropriate way of comparing degree of undershoot across languages. However, even though the proportional undershoot measurement may provide a useful index comparing the overall coarticulation degree in a CV token for cross-linguistic data, it is concluded that it may potentially wrongly predict the cases of transfer or error as a progress in learning.