Relative Timing of Bilabial Gesture in Finnish

The Embodied Task Dynamic model of gestural sequencing predicts that an intervocalic consonantal lip closing gesture should come later if the tongue is moving from /i/ to /a/ rather than from /a/ to /i/ because this relation is more efficient in terms of production and perceptibility. We tested this prediction for Finnish /ipa/ and /api/ using EMA to track articulation. The results confirmed the predictions of the model for single /p/ and also revealed a significantly greater lag for geminate /pp/. This quantity effect is also born out by the model.