Relation between syllable count judgments and durations of English liquid rimes

Judgments of the number of syllables in a given word are usually consistent, but there is a class of English words with liquid codas and tense vowel/diphthong nuclei for which speakers have variable syllable count intuitions (e.g. fire, feel). This variation has previously been hypothesized to be associated with differences in subsyllabic structural organization, which predicts that speaker judgments of syllable count should correlate with produced rime durations. To test this hypothesis, 34 native speakers of English participated in sequential and parallel syllable count judgment and word production tasks. Durations of diphthong/tense vowel-liquid rimes associated with disyllabic judgments were found to be significantly longer than those associated with monosyllabic judgments. In addition, substantial variation in syllable-count judgments between and within speakers was observed. This relationship between syllable-count judgment and rime duration has important implications for our understanding of the relation between phonological representations and production.