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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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Geminates and homorganic nasal + stop (NC) clusters have been the topics of speculation about their possessing or lacking 'integrity' (unitary character). I present experimental evidence on this issue as it pertains to such entities in Hindi. Evidence from a new experimental technique, a word game, shows that geminates are treated as indivisible but for NC clusters the situation is more complex: bilabial and alveolar NCs were treated by subjects as divisible but velar NCs were largely kept intact. The results for the retroflex and palatal NCs were inconclusive. A voiced stop in NC clusters significantly influenced responses that did not break up the NC.
Bibliographic reference. Ohala, Manjari (2003): "Integrity of geminates and homorganic nasal plus stop: evidence from a word game", In ICPhS-15, 1173-1176.