An MRI Study on the Articulatory Properties of Italian Consonants

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data have been collected for three male speakers of Italian producing sustained consonants in VCV-context (with V=/{i, a,u}/). For one speaker the resulting database consists of a midsagittal set of 42 Italian articulations (/p/, /f/, /ts/, /t/, /s/, /S/, /tS/, /k/, /L/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ and /J/) plus 9 dialectal sound configurations and 12 scans for specific nasal allophones. It is associated with vowels, jaw and teeth references and dental casts. A subset of images is also available, however, for a limited selection of articulations produced by two other control speakers. It has been collected in view of dialect studies and it includes midsagittal and coronal scans. As in previous partial publications of these data, the aim of the present paper is to discuss only place and manner of articulation in a descriptive framework.