Problem
We have seen that the vowel part of a syllable changes over its course depending on the consonants before and after it. We therefore can use the acoustic information from the vowel to help determine what consonants precede and follow that vowel. We have focused on the nasals /m/ and /n/ rather than the stops, since the nasals are longer and easier to see on a spectrogram. But the same changes in the vowel occur for the stops that are made in the same place - /m/ and /p/ are bilabial, and /n/ and /t/ are alveolar.
So returning to the examples of /spæt/, /stæt/, and /skæt/, we distinguish one of these words from the other by the changes in resonance that occur on the /æ/ part. Explain in what sense this is an illusion.