Locke (1983), studying world languages, found that some have word-initial clusters, some word-final clusters, and others consonant clusters in both word-initial and wordfinal positions. Considering negative transfer, linguists would claim native speakers of tongues without consonant clusters can have difficulty in phonologically manipulating target items with consonant clusters. Chinese differs...

Japanese loanword adaptations show an asymmetry in the treatment of word-final [n] in words from French and English, respectively: while word-final [n] is adapted as a moraic nasal consonant in loanwords from English, it is adapted as a geminate nasal followed by an epenthetic vowel in loanwords from French. We provide evidence that this asymmetry originates in the way Japanese speakers perceiv...

In Russian, the same consonant sequences are permitted in various phonotactic environments. The presence of a word boundary or reduced vowel can be phonologically contrastive, and both learners and experienced listeners may rely on fine acoustic cues to discriminate between phonotactic possibilities. In this study, durational characteristics of consonant sequences are examined to establish whet...

This research aims to examine Sundanese students' proficiency and errors in performing final consonant clusters English. The used a qualitative approach. participants this were 40 college students. Their mother tongue was Sundanese. data recordings, which collected through pronunciation test of the target provided word list. A perceptual approach applied analyze recordings. results found that s...

This tutorial presents an introduction to the contemporary linguistic framework known as optimality theory (OT). The basic assumptions of this constraint-based theory as a general model of grammar are first outlined, with formal notation being defined and illustrated. Concepts unique to the theory, including "emergence of the unmarked," are also described. OT is then examined more specifically ...

Previous work on Cantonese unreleased syllablefinal stops have shown that these sounds are cued primarily by their spectral transitions during the preceding vowel (Khouw & Ciocca, 2006). However, it remains unclear whether speakers have lost a place distinction between such sounds. This study investigates the articulation of syllable-final /t, k/ that precede consonants differing by place (labi...

1 A challenge for OT 1.1 Compensatory lengthening as weight conservation Compensatory lengthening occurs when the featural content of a nucleus or moraic coda is deleted, or becomes reaffiliated with a nonmoraic position — typically an onset — and the vacated mora, instead of being lost, is retained with new content (Hayes 1989). Compensatory lengthening is most often triggered by the deletion ...

Morphonotactic consonant clusters originate through morphological operations and are mostly combinations of consonants across morpheme boundaries. As they are processed faster and acquired earlier than phonotactic clusters, it is hypothesised that in speech production, morphonotactic clusters are more robust and highlighted than phonotactic clusters. The present study pursues two goals: it exam...

The quality of an epenthetic vowel in a particular language may vary depending on segmental and prosodic factors, such as the quality of the surrounding consonants, the quality of other vowels in the word, and the position of the epenthetic vowel within the word. This last factor has received little attention in the literature. I have identified a number of cases in Italian in which the quality...