Phonotactic constraints are language-specific patterns in the sequencing of speech sounds. Are these constraints represented at the syllable level (ng cannot begin syllables in English) or at the word level (ng cannot begin words)? In a continuous recognition-memory task, participants more often falsely recognized novel test items that followed than violated the training constraints, whether tr...

English and French listeners were tested on discrimination and open-response categorization of laryngeal contrasts in three non-native syllable onsets differing in gestural complexity, in particular in the phasing between laryngeal and supralaryngeal articulations. All onsets involved a lateral, which was combined with a coronal stop in two contrasts. Results support the view that syllable onse...

Recordings of Finnish casual dialogue and careful reading were analyzed auditorily and on spectrograms. Syllables on the phonological level were compared to syllable-sized units (C ́V ́s) on the phonetic level. Comparisons with existing Swedish and Spanish data revealed several differences: Finnish had much less temporal equalization of syllable-sized units in casual speech than Swedish, and even...

Rhythm in terms of the modulation of syllable durations represents an information-bearing feature of verbal utterances contributing both to the meaning of a sentence (linguistic prosody) as well as a speaker’s emotional expression (affective prosody). In order to delineate the neural structures subserving rhythmic shaping of speech production, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was pe...

In this study, we examined two prosodic characteristics of speech production in 8-10-year-old experienced cochlear implant (CI) users who completed a nonword repetition task. We looked at how often they correctly reproduced syllable number and primary stress location in their responses. Although only 5% of all nonword imitations were produced correctly without errors, 64% of the imitations cont...

This study provides evidence from the coordination of articulatory gestures, using electromagnetic articulography (EMMA), in favour of a heterosyllabic analysis of word initial clusters in Tashlhiyt. Evidence from calculations of C-center and Rightmost C to a following anchor in the syllable as well as the stability index consistently supports the predominant analysis amongst phonologists of Ta...

The control of sequenced behaviors, including human speech, requires that the brain coordinate the production of discrete motor elements with their concatenation into complex patterns. In birdsong, another sequential vocal behavior, the acoustic structure (phonology) of individual song elements, or "syllables," must be coordinated with the sequencing of syllables into a song. However, it is unk...

Three categorization experiments investigated whether the speaking rate of a preceding sentence influences durational cues to the perception of suprasegmental lexical-stress patterns. Dutch two-syllable word fragments had to be judged as coming from one of two longer words that matched the fragment segmentally but differed in lexical stress placement. Word pairs contrasted primary stress on eit...

This paper investigates the coordination relations between f0 turning points and segmental landmarks in falling pitch accents in Catalan. Ten Central Catalan speakers participated in the production experiment, for a total of 500 target pitch accents. Results indicate that while the beginning of the falling accent gesture (H) is tightly synchronized with the onset of the accented syllable, the e...

Native speakers and learners of Latvian read isolated words and a short text, designed to inventory the prosodic patterns of the target language. The learners did not match native speaker patterns on any of the prosodic properties examined: contrastive vowel durations, syllable intonations, stress or rhythm. Rather, their productions were strongly influenced by the prosodic patterns of their na...