Electroglottographic and acoustic data for Catalan three-consonant clusters composed of a wordand syllable-final C1C2 sequence and an underlyingly voiced C3 in wordand syllable-initial position were collected in order to verify whether a regressive voicing assimilation process operates on all obstruents placed at the C2 and C1 sites. Data reveal the presence of low percentages of vocal fold vib...

Syllable fusion is a Hong Kong Cantonese connected speech process, whereby edges of syllables are obscured by consonant lenition or deletion, and vowel reduction. More extreme fusion can simplify contour tones and merge the qualities of vowels that would be separated by an onset or coda consonant at more normal degrees of disjuncture between words. This paper investigates the influence of speec...

GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY [q.v.] aims to construct a predictive theory of natural language sound systems, rooted in a finely-detailed account of the principles defining linguistic representations and the possible relations between them. Within these broad goals, OPTIMALITY THEORY (OT) develops in the context of specific empirical theses about the way phonological systems are organized. We identify t...

is paper presents a derivational OT account of the word-nal deletion and augmentation alternations in Lardil. It presents two arguments in favor of the stratal view of derivations where the grammar is dišerent at dišerent stages (Bermúdez-Otero forthcoming, Kiparsky forthcoming), and against the serial view where the ranking is the same at all steps, and each step constitutes a minimal change ...

This paper takes a computational/experimental approach to investigating faithfulness in input–output phonological mappings. We seek to explain the results of a speech production experiment recently reported in Davidson (2010). In that experiment, native English speakers were asked to produce phonotactically unattested consonant clusters. We argue that modifications of the target consonant clust...

This study investigates perception by Mandarin Chinese and Japanese native speakers of English consonants in syllable-final position, and the effect of vowel duration as a cue to voicing in syllablefinal stops. Two experiments were conducted in the study and the results revealed that Mandarin Chinese speakers performed better than Japanese speakers but the position of the consonant in the sylla...

Previous studies have shown that listeners have difficulty discriminating between non-native CC sequences and licit alternatives (e.g. Japanese [ebzo]-[ebuzo], English [bnif]-[b=nif]) (Berent et al., 2007; Dupoux et al., 1999). Some have argued that the difficulty in distinguishing these illicit–licit pairs is due to a ‘‘perceptual illusion’’ caused by the phonological system, which prevents li...