Syllable onsets are defined as the initial consonant or consonant cluster in a syllable (e.g., BR in BREAD). In the present study, using a letter detection paradigm and French words, we tested whether syllable onsets are processed as units by the reading system. In Experiment 1, we replicated Gross, Treiman, and Inman's (2000) result of observing no difference between the detection latencies of...

Three experiments addressed the hypothesis that production factors constrain phonotactic learning in adult English speakers, and that this constraint gives rise to a markedness effect on learning. In Experiment 1, an acoustic measure was used to assess consonant–consonant coarticulation in naturally produced nonwords, which were then used as stimuli in a phonotactic learning experiment. Results...

In a previous paper we investigated how onsets of overlapped speech in English are timed with respect to syllable boundaries of the current speaker [1]. Overlap initiations were found to be more frequent around syllable boundaries than at other locations within the syllable. In this paper we extend the previous analysis by reporting on results from two other corpora in two different languages (...

Voice onset time (VOT) is an important parameter of speech that denotes the time interval between consonant onset and the onset of low-frequency periodicity generated by rhythmic vocal cord vibration. Voiced stop consonants (/b/, /g/, and /d/) in syllable initial position are characterized by short VOTs, whereas unvoiced stop consonants (/p/, /k/, and t/) contain prolonged VOTs. As the VOT is i...

In previous infant studies on statistics-based word segmentation, the unit of statistical computation was always aligned with the syllabic edge, which had a consonant onset. The current study addressed whether the learning system imposes a constraint that favors word forms beginning with a consonant onset over those beginning with an onsetless sub-syllable, by examining infants' segmentation of...

This study attempts to describe the ability of English Department students, Faculty Humanities, Udayana University in pronouncing final consonant clusters. Consonant clusters are groups consonants that can occur initia lly (onset) and finally (coda) syllable structure. The features each language highly dependent on itself. In English, number at beginning a be up three such as: structure /strʌkt...

The special status of word-initial /s/-consonant clusters has long been observed by researchers: Some /s/-initial sequences, such as /s/-stop clusters, violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle. In English, /s/ is the only word-initial consonant that may be followed by another homorganic consonant (e.g. /st-/, /sn-/), by either a nasal or a stop (e.g. /sm-/, /sn-/, /sp-/), or by a two-element c...

The present study investigates the influence of phonetic factors on the frequency of vowel epenthesis in the German speech of Chinese learners. The subjects were intermediate learners of German who entered Germany within five months of their study. Descriptive statistics were performed on the data collected from reading tasks, and phonetic analysis was provided to explain the phenomenon of epen...

--------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT----------------------------------------------------------In this study, the Vowel-to-Vowel (V-to-V) coarticulatory effect in the Vowel-Consonant-Vowel (VCV) sequences is investigated. The stimuli are in the form of C1V1.C2V2, which is designed for V1 to affect V2. The subjects are twelve native speakers of standard Chinese, and th...

A word-final consonant is standardly assumed to occupy a syllable coda. An alternative is to treat it as the onset of a syllable containing a phonetically unexpressed nucleus. The final-onset analysis is shown to out-perform the final-coda analysis on a range of phonological phenomena, including syllable typology, stress, vowel length, and consonant phonotactics. A constraint-based implementati...