The reduced energy level of unstressed syllables compromises perceptibility of vowel distinctions, leading to the ‘neutralization’ of some of the distinctions. The difference between the collapse of most vowels into [M] in English, and more restricted effects in other languages is shown to be managed by constraint ranking within OT. The same factors that compromise perceptibility of Vquality ar...

The diachronic development of Afrikaans phonotactics is characterized by a considerable number of processes that affect consonant clusters, i.e. sequences of two or more consonants, especially when occurring in the word-final coda position (cf. Watermeyer 1996; Roberge 2002). For example, clusters were reduced in direk /dɪrək/ ('direct', Dutch direct) or nag /nɑx/ ('night', Dutch nacht). Nevert...

Mandarin has a much more limited segmental inventory than English, and permits only nasals in coda position, presenting a challenge for learners of English. However, previous studies have mainly explored this issue using perceptual transcription. This study provides an acoustic analysis of coda consonant productions by Mandarin L2 learners of Australian English. The results indicate that they p...

A syllable is defined as a unit of spoken language bigger than a speech sound (phoneme), and is made up of three components: a nucleus, which consists of a single vowel or syllabic consonant, optionally surrounded by one or more consonants. The consonants that precede the nucleus are collectively referred to as the onset, while those that succeed it are called the coda. The nucleus and coda are...

1. INTRODUCTION. * In some traditional models of the syllable, it is assumed that the syllable is composed of onset, nucleus and coda, where the onset consists of prevocalic consonants, the coda of any postvocalic consonants and the nucleus of a vowel, diphthong or syllabic consonant (see Van der Hulst & Smith 1982). Derwing et al. (1988) questioned the sharp boundaries between the subsyllabic ...

This research explores the role of phonotactic probability in two-year-olds' production of coda consonants. Twenty-nine children were asked to repeat CVC non-words that were used as labels for pictures of imaginary animals. The CVC non-words were controlled for their phonotactic probabilities, neighbourhood densities, word-likelihood ratings, and contained the identical coda across low and high...

The factors that influence native English speakers to make a consonant ambisyllabic is explored in 627 bisyllabic words. The /b/ in habit, for example, was considered ambisyllabic when a participant chose hab as the first part of the word, and later in the experiment, bit as the second. About 20% of the responses were ambisyllabic. For words such as rabbit with a single intervocalic consonant, ...

Hearing aids (HAs) only partially restore the ability of older hearing impaired (OHI) listeners to understand speech in noise, due in large part to persistent deficits in consonant identification. Here, we investigated whether adaptive perceptual training would improve consonant-identification in noise in sixteen aided OHI listeners who underwent 40 hours of computer-based training in their hom...

This acoustic study investigates the phoneme /s/ in Afrikaans and its backed realization in the consonant cluster /rs/ in coda position. The study focuses on spectral differences between the two contexts, with and without a preceding /r/, employing two spectral measurements: the center of gravity and skewness. The analysis revealed a lower center of gravity and a lesser degree of skewness for /...