15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


Markedness Asymmetries in Place Perception in Consonant Clusters

John Kingston, Takahito Shinya

University of Massachusetts, USA

We replicated and extended Repp's (1983) study of context effects on consonant place perception in VC1C2V strings. A 7-step [b-d-g] continuum was synthesized in which F2 and F3 followed mirror-image transitions in VC1 and C2V. VC1 was spliced together with C2V with silent gaps lasting 50, 100, 150, or 200 ms separating them. Single C responses were most frequent at the shortest closure duration, but didn't disappear even at the longest, and were only slightly less frequent when VC transitions differed acoustically from CV transitions. Single C responses were more often the unmarked coronal than the marked labial or dorsal places.
   Coronal responses to C1 were more frequent before a coronal C2, but more frequent to C2 after a non-coronal C1. Labial responses to both C1 and C2 were more frequent next to a non-labial C. Dorsal responses to C1 were also more frequent before a non-dorsal C2, but differed little to C2 with C1's place.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Kingston, John / Shinya, Takahito (2003): "Markedness asymmetries in place perception in consonant clusters", In ICPhS-15, 399-402.