Past research has shown that sound sequences not permitted in our native language may be distorted by our perceptual system. A well-documented example is vowel epenthesis, a phenomenon by which listeners hallucinate non-existent vowels within illegal consonantal sequences. As reported in previous work, this occurs for instance in Japanese (JP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), languages for which ...

This article examines the influence of phonetic and phonological factors and lexical frequency on accuracy and error types in the production of non-native phonotactics. In Experiment 1, English speakers were presented with non-native word-initial consonant clusters that were varied on several phonetic dimensions. Results showed that speakers are not equally accurate on the production of differe...

This paper offers a contribution towards the prosodic interpretation of segmental sequences. Focus will be given to consonantal sequences where epenthesis may optionally occur in Brazilian Portuguese, as in o[bs]truir or o[bis]truir “to obstruct”. We will show that some consonantal sequences have distinct representations from others, being that the difference in representation has an impact on ...

Listeners of various languages tend to perceive an illusory vowel inside consonant clusters that are illegal in their native language. Here, we test whether this phenomenon arises after phoneme categorization or rather interacts with it. We assess the perception of illegal consonant clusters in native speakers of Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and European Portuguese, three languages that have...

This book proposes a particular theory of syllable structure and syllabification processes, and applies the theory in detail to the phonology of the four languages named in the title. This review focuses on the two Native American languages represented, Tonkawa and Yawelmani. Chapters 1 and 2 argue for the basic approach (including brief discussions of Wiyot and Navajo). Chapters 3 to 6 are dev...

We measure varietal di erences in general, and di erences with respect to standard languages in particular ( dialectality , in Herrgen/Schmidt's sense) in order to systematize observations about dialect di erences, to make sense of exceptions, and to enable measurements based on randomly selected material, thus obviating issues of potential bias. Finally, measurements allow the characterization...

Liangmai, a Tibeto-Burman member spoken in North East India (NEI), has twenty consonant phonemes and six vowel with four contrastive tones. Three stops three nasals permitted at the end of syllable all consonants occurs beginning syllable. A voiceless libio-dental fricative which is rare other NEI languages major consonant. Vowel system several diphthongs. The close central unrounded /ɨ/ can ap...

Chinese words written partly or fully in roman letters have gained popularity in Mandarin Chinese in the last few decades and an appendix of such Mandarin Alphabetical Words (MAWs) is included in the authoritative dictionary of Standard Mandarin. However, no transcription of MAWs has been provided because it is not clear whether we should keep the original English pronunciation or transcribe MA...

We model the interaction of two phonological factors that condition French schwa alternations: schwa is more likely after two consonants; and schwa is more likely in the penultimate syllable. Using new data from a judgment study, we show that both factors play a role in schwa epenthesis and deletion, confirming previous impressionistic descriptions, and that the two factors interact cumulativel...