English speakers’ sensitivity to the phonotactic probabilities of ‘CV-’ and ‘-VC’ components of CVC syllables in English (original) (raw)

Syllable Structure and the Distribution of Phonemes in English Syllables

Journal of Memory and Language, 1997

In describing the phonotactics (patterning of phonemes) of English syllables, linguists have focused on absolute restrictions concerning which phonemes may occupy which slots of the syllable. To determine whether probabilistic patterns also exist, we analyzed the distributions of phonemes in a reasonably comprehensive list of uninflected English CVC (consonant-vowelconsonant) words, some 2001 words in all. The results showed that there is a significant connection between the vowel and the following consonant (coda), with certain vowel-coda combinations being more frequent than expected by chance. In contrast, we did not find significant associations between the initial consonant (onset) and the vowel. These findings support the idea that English CVC syllables are composed of an onset and a vowel-coda rime. Implications for lexical processing are discussed. ᭧ 1997 Academic Press

Vowels as islands of reliability

Journal of Memory and Language, 1987

Vowel nuclei of syllables appear to provide a relatively stable (although not stationary) frame of reference for judging consonant events. We offer evidence that reliable consonant identification demands prior or simultaneous evaluation of this "vocalic frame." Listeners were presented a list of /bVs/, ldVsl. and lgVsl syllables and were instructed to press a response key immediately upon recognizing a particular initial consonant target. Three groups of subjects monitored for /bl, /d., and /gl, respectively. The test syllables contained 10 English vowels varying substantially in intrinsic duration. Response times to the initial consonants correlated positively with the duration of the following vowels. even when the effect of consonant-vowel formant transition duration was partialed out. The results suggest that consonant recognition is vowel dependent and. specifically. that a certain amount or proportion of the vowel formant trajectory must be evaluated before consonants can be reliably identified. r{; 1987 Academic Prt:�s. Inc A recurrent finding in speech research is that the perceptual interpretation of conso nant cues may depend critically on infor mation about the following vowel. To take an example from the early literature, Li berman, Delattre, and Cooper (1952) re ported that a brief filtered noise burst (cen tered at about 1440 Hz) was typically per ceived as /p/ in front of a steady state Iii or lui, but as /k/ in front of a steady state /a/. More recently, Mann and Repp (1980) found an effect of the following vowel on the identification of a noise segment that was perceptually intermediate between /s/ and /fl. The segment was more likely to be labeled /s/ before lui than before /a/. These perceptual effects may be ex plained in terms of the listener's implicit knowledge of the normal acoustic conse

On the status of final consonant clusters in English syllables

1984

Linguistic and behavioral evidence suggests that the syllable is composed of two major constituents, an onset and a rime. The onset is the initial consonant or consonant cluster. The rime is the remainder of the syllable, excepting any inflectional endings or appendices. The internal structure of the rime was studied in four experiments. When an obstruent followed the vowel, subjects most readily divided the rime between the vowel and the obstruent. Thus, final consonant clusters beginning with obstruents formed cohesive units. Postvocalic liquids were grouped with the vowel rather than the final consonant. Postvocalic nasals were intermediate. These results are consistent with linguistic notions of a sonority hierarchy, by which classes of consonants differ in their affinity with vowels.

Intuitions for phonological constraints in binomials: A psycholinguistic investigation

Binomials (e.g., spic and span; hanky-panky) are lexicalized sequences of two or more constituents whose irreversible order is determined by semantic and phonological factors (Benor and Levy, 2006; Cooper and Ross, 1975). As an extension of early psycholinguistic work (Pinker and Birdsong, 1979) the present experimental study examines speakers' sensitivities to proposed phonological constraints on constituent ordering in binomials. Intuitions for preferred constituent order by native English and French speakers, and those of advanced L2 English and L2 French speakers, were elicited with a computer-based judgment task, using pairs of nonsense sequences, structured in such a way that one expression conforms to a specific constraint, and the other violates it (e.g., rigster and ragster vs. *ragster and rigster). The constraints in question involve quality and number of consonants, and quality and length of vowels in constituent elements of binomials. Experimental results revealed that the intuitions of native English speakers were generally more in line with the proposed constraints than those of native French speakers. Further, the intuitions of advanced nonnative speakers of both languages were overall not significantly different from those of natives, suggesting that subtle nativelike sensitivities to the phonological constraints in question may be acquired. A planned analysis revealed that intuitions are similar for coordinated type (e.g., wheeling and dealing) and hyphenated (reduplicative) type (e.g., razzle-dazzle) items, a heretofore unexplored distinction. A further analysis showed that participants displayed sensitivities to vowel quality and coda complexity. The result partially concords with accounts on invariable word order that derive from principles of phonoiconicity and markedness (Birdsong, 1979; Sobkowiak, 1993).

The Perception of the Vowel Continuum in British and US English Speakers (Publication)

Papers from the Lancaster University Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics and Language Teaching, 2018

In this paper, the perception of the /ae/-/ɛ/ vowel continuum was analysed in British and United States English speakers by testing their word identification across the pan-pen continuum. A clear difference was found between the two speaker groups, with the U.S. speakers continuing to perceive 'pan' beyond the British speakers, presumably due to /ae/-tensing in U.S. dialects, particularly before nasal codas. It was found that the amount of /ae/-tensing across phonetic environments in a U.S. speaker's dialect as well as their exposure to British English affected how they perceived the continuum. The results prove Bell-Berti's (1979) argument that speech production and perception are closely related, and the steep drop in perception from 'pan' to 'pen' displayed by both speaker groups may prove that vowel perception is categorical, in contrast to popular opinion, though a discrimination task would have to be run before any reliable claim can be made.