TY - JOUR
T1 - Phonology, phonetics, or frequency
T2 - Influences on the production of non-native sequences
AU - Davidson, Lisa
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank Stefan Benus, Matt Goldrick, and Adamantios Gafos for their insightful comments and help with this manuscript. Reviewers Ben Munson, Jen Hay and Donca Steriade and editor Jonathan Harrington from the Journal of Phonetics also provided many suggestions that have helped me improve this paper. Many thanks to Jeris Brunette for analyzing data for the second experiment. Parts of the first experiment was presented at ICPhS 2003 (Barcelona) and LabPhon 9 (University of Illinois) and was submitted as part of the author's unpublished doctoral dissertation (Johns Hopkins University, 2003). The second experiment was presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development. Part of this research was supported by the IGERT program in the Cognitive Science of Language at Johns Hopkins University, National Science Foundation Grant 997280.
PY - 2006/1
Y1 - 2006/1
N2 - This article examines the influence of phonetic and phonological factors and lexical frequency on accuracy and error types in the production of non-native phonotactics. In Experiment 1, English speakers were presented with non-native word-initial consonant clusters that were varied on several phonetic dimensions. Results showed that speakers are not equally accurate on the production of different illegal sequences. An analysis of lexical frequency statistics demonstrates that the frequency of these sequences in other positions across the lexicon does not correlate with accuracy. An explanation based on phonological knowledge is posited instead. A second experiment on the investigation of the strategies used to repair the illegal clusters indicated that speakers prefer schwa insertion. While previous research has assumed that such repairs are vowel epenthesis, a detailed acoustic analysis indicates that inserted schwas are significantly different than lexical schwas. These acoustic characteristics are compatible with articulatory evidence suggesting that there is a prohibition on applying canonical English consonant cluster coordination to phonotactically illegal sequences, leading speakers to "pull apart" the consonant gestures and causing a transitional schwa to appear on the acoustic record. The ramifications of these results for the role of an abstract phonological level in production are discussed.
AB - This article examines the influence of phonetic and phonological factors and lexical frequency on accuracy and error types in the production of non-native phonotactics. In Experiment 1, English speakers were presented with non-native word-initial consonant clusters that were varied on several phonetic dimensions. Results showed that speakers are not equally accurate on the production of different illegal sequences. An analysis of lexical frequency statistics demonstrates that the frequency of these sequences in other positions across the lexicon does not correlate with accuracy. An explanation based on phonological knowledge is posited instead. A second experiment on the investigation of the strategies used to repair the illegal clusters indicated that speakers prefer schwa insertion. While previous research has assumed that such repairs are vowel epenthesis, a detailed acoustic analysis indicates that inserted schwas are significantly different than lexical schwas. These acoustic characteristics are compatible with articulatory evidence suggesting that there is a prohibition on applying canonical English consonant cluster coordination to phonotactically illegal sequences, leading speakers to "pull apart" the consonant gestures and causing a transitional schwa to appear on the acoustic record. The ramifications of these results for the role of an abstract phonological level in production are discussed.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.wocn.2005.03.004
DO - 10.1016/j.wocn.2005.03.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:32644437407
SN - 0095-4470
VL - 34
SP - 104
EP - 137
JO - Journal of Phonetics
JF - Journal of Phonetics
IS - 1
ER -