ARTICULATION TESTING METHODS 



TABLE VII 



Articulation of Consonant Compounds 



831 



The articulation of the consonant compounds as a class does not 

 differ appreciably from the articulation of the corresponding simple 

 consonants. The final r compound is seen to be an exception to this 

 general rule. The errors for combinations containing this sound were 

 caused by the large number of omissions of the modifier. For example, 

 if "barb" were called, "bab" would be recorded. When the final r 

 is combined with a consonant, the tendency is to shorten its duration 

 and to stress it less than is done when it occurs as a simple final. 

 Also, as mentioned before, the r sound materially modifies the vowel 

 preceding it and usually in such a way that the vowel and r sounds 

 are spoken as a vowel. For these two reasons, it escapes detection 

 more readily than when used as a simple final. It will be noticed 

 from the table that f is definitely more difficult to recognize than fl, 

 while p is definitely less difficult to recognize than its compounds pl 

 and pr. There is also a large difference between the results for s 

 and ns. Although these differences are large, some tend to increase 

 and others to decrease the average articulation. It is seen from the 

 table that if the r compounds are omitted, the averages for the simple 

 consonant sounds and for their compounds are approximately equal. 

 Since this class of sounds comprises less than 15 per cent of the speech 

 sounds, the results obtained by using a list in which the consonant 



