Figure 1.

MEM predictions for the time course of protrusion (bold lines) and constriction (thin lines) from the vowel [i] to the rounded vowel [y] in French. The top signal is for the basic gesture for rounding in the simple sequence [iy], without an intervocalic obstruent consonant (or a silent pause). The three other signals, all aligned on the [y] acoustic onset (vertical dotted line), illustrate the expansion of the rounding movement—with the prediction of a linear expansion function—through sequences with an increasing number of intervocalic consonants (here up to five consonants in French; the same for English [i] to [u] sequences). OI, the obstruent consonant acoustic phase between the two vowels. Vertical arrows indicate the range of variation of the protrusion and constriction onsets (see text). Notice that protrusion will be inverted for comparison’s sake in the presentation of our data.