Perception of /dl/ and /tl/ clusters: A study with French and I

French listeners tend to hear illegal utterance-initial /tl/ and /dl/ clusters as /kl/ and /gl/, respectively, when speech is produced by French speakers [1, 5]. We reexamined this phenomenon, once called “phonotactic perceptual assimilation,” in a cross-linguistic design using Modern Hebrew. In Hebrew, virtually all the obstruent-liquid clusters are permissible, including /dl, tl/. French and Israeli listeners were tested on their discrimination performance for the /dl/-/gl/ and /tl/-/kl/ contrasts, using monosyllables such as /tla, kla/ produced by a native speaker of Hebrew. French listeners showed substantial difficulty at discriminating these contrasts –especially /tl/-/kl/– whereas Israeli listeners experienced a slight difficulty only for /tl/-/kl/. French listeners categorised as velar the initial consonant of the /tl/ items and, but much less often, that of the /dl/ items. Altogether then, the /tl/-to-/kl/ perceptual assimilation is largely language-specific. Yet, it might be partly determined by universal perceptual constraints that seem to emerge in Modern Hebrew.