Research on perceptual epenthesis in Japanese has revealed high back [ɯ] to be the vowel commonly perceived in illicit consonant sequences. However, loanword studies suggest that there are three epenthetic vowels, which reflect phonotactic restrictions on certain consonant + vowel sequences. Expanding previous perception studies, this paper investigates the extent to which perceptual epenthesis...

This study examines developmental change in the production of epenthetic vowels by Japanese learners of English in relation to acquisition of L2 English speech rhythm. Seventy-two Japanese learners of English in the J-AESOP corpus were divided into lowerand higher-level learners according to their proficiency score and the frequency of vowel epenthesis. Three learners were excluded because no v...

This study investigates two idiosyncratic phenomena found in the French dialect of the Windsor area in SW Ontario. (1) Rhotics in this dialect are pronounced in three phonetic varieties: the dorsal fricative, the alveolar approximant, and the alveolar tap. (2) An epenthetic schwa is also found in the phonetic realization in certain phonemic contexts. Through phonetic analysis of recorded speech...

We report a series of experiments examining the effects on word processing of insertion of an optional epenthetic vowel in word-final consonant clusters in Dutch. Such epenthesis turns film, for instance, into filəm. In a word-reversal task listeners treated words with and without epenthesis alike, as monosyllables, suggesting that the variant forms both activate the same canonical representati...

Anaptyxis-prothesis asymmetries, common in loanword adaptation and interlanguage phonology, are characterized by vowel insertion before sibilant + stop clusters, but into obstruent + sonorant clusters. I propose that such patterns reflect an epenthesis strategy in which the site of epenthesis is chosen to maximize perceptual similarity between input and output. Experimental evidence in support ...

This paper examines how the strategies for L2 production utilized by foreign language learners affect the performance of non-native speech recognition. Producing English consonant clusters are the most problematic for Korean learners of English because of difference between Korean and English phonotactics. The strategies of Korean learners in producing English consonant clusters entail a large ...

In this paper we present a novel approach to continuous, whole-sentence ASL recognition that uses phonemes instead of whole signs as the basic units. Our approach is based on a sequential phonological model of ASL. According to this model the ASL signs can be broken into movements and holds, which are both considered phonemes. This model does away with the distinction between whole signs and ep...

This study examines developmental change in the production of epenthetic vowels by Japanese learners of English in relation to acquisition of L2 English speech rhythm. Seventy-two Japanese learners of English in the J-AESOP corpus were divided into lowerand higher-level learners according to their proficiency score and the frequency of vowel epenthesis. Three learners were excluded because no v...