Which term describes the overlap of articulatory gestures due to neighboring sounds?

• A. Coarticulation
• B. Phonotactics
• C. Canonical babbling
• D. Protoword

Answer: (A)

Coarticulation describes the overlap of articulatory gestures due to neighboring sounds. In speech, the lips, tongue, and jaw don’t wait for one sound to finish before starting the next; they move in a continuous flow. This means the articulatory posture for a sound is shaped by the sounds before and after it, leading to anticipatory adjustments (preparing for the next sound) and carryover effects (lingering influence from the previous one). For example, the movement of the lips and tongue in a sequence with a rounded vowel can cause subtle rounding or shaping of the preceding consonant, and vowels can be nasalized when a nasal consonant follows. These overlaps create the smooth transitions and rich variation you hear in everyday speech. The other terms refer to different ideas: phonotactics is about which sound sequences are allowed in a language, while canonical babbling and protowords describe stages or forms of early infant speech.