Optimality Theory explains typological markedness implications by proposing that all speakers possess universal constraints penalizing marked structure, irrespective of the evidence provided by their language (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). An account of phonological perception sketched here entails that markedness constraints reveal their presence by inducing perceptual 'repairs' to structure...

Naba, also known as Bilala, is a Nilo-Saharan (Sara-Bagirmi) language of Chad with about 410,000 speakers from three ethnic groups. This paper gives basic description the Naba phonological system, using segmental phonology and lexical approaches. Topics covered include phonemic inventory, syllable structure phonotactic restrictions, tone system its interaction other processes, main post-lexical...

This paper establishes the claim that geminate sonorants are cross-linguistically marked, and furthermore, that the relative sonority of a geminate positively correlates with its markedness, i.e., the universal ranking *GEMGLIDE » *GEMLIQUID » *GEMNASAL holds. This ranking is supported by a cross-linguistic survey of geminate inventories (Podesva 2002; Taylor 1985) as well as by a number of pho...

for their invaluable input into this paper. All errors are my own. The sonority scale that ranks phonemes according to relative " loudness " has long played a significant role in the fields of Phonology and Historical Linguistics, yet it is conspicuously absent from the speech recognition literature. In this preliminary study using the Hoosier Mental Lexicon, it was found that approximately hal...

Sonority is an important notion in phonology, but its definition has been controversial. Our analysis showed that sonority can be located in a multi-dimensional perceptual space, and that the dimensions of the space have correspondence to both acoustic parameters and phonological features. In the experiment, a confusion matrix was calculated from the results of consonant perception test for LPC...

The issues this paper addresses are the sonority conversion, which is defined as different ranking of sonority in a certain language, and the case taken from a variety of English. While Rhotic has larger sonority value than Lateral and Nasal in the general ranking, in Present-Day American English the tap, a rhotic, is less sonorous than the lateral and nasals but more sonorous than obstruents. ...

Phonological knowledge of a language involves knowledge about which segments can be combined under what conditions. Languages vary in the quantity and quality of licensed combinations, in particular sequences of consonants, with Polish being a language with a large inventory of such combinations. The present paper reports on a two-session experiment in which Polish-speaking adult participants l...

All languages allow stop place contrasts in prevocalic position. Many languages allow stop place contrasts before liquids [l, r]. Indeed, stop-liquid clusters like [br, gl] are among the most common word-initial consonant clusters [2]. The preference for stop-liquid clusters is commonly attributed to Sonority Sequencing constraints – specifically a preference for large sonority rises in onset c...