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

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


A Competitive, Coupled Oscillator Model of Syllable Structure

Hosung Nam (1), Elliot Saltzman (2)

(1) Yale University, USA
(2) Boston University, USA

Syllable-initial consonant sequences have been shown to differ from syllable-final ones in two ways: they show the c-center effect (Browman &: Goldstein, 2000) and they exhibit greater stability in timing (Byrd, 1996). Here we show that both of these differences emerge automatically from a model in which phonetic units (gestures) are modeled as oscillators, and coordination is achieved by coupling. Significantly, the necessary coupling relations are abstract and involve competitive, mutually incompatible specifications.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Nam, Hosung / Saltzman, Elliot (2003): "A competitive, coupled oscillator model of syllable structure", In ICPhS-15, 2253-2256.