Vowel aperture and syllable segmentation in French.
The theories of Pulgram (1970) suggest that if the vowel of a French syllable is open then it will induce syllable segmentation responses that result in the syllable being closed, and vice versa. After the empirical verification that our target French-speaking population was capable of distinguishing between mid-vowel aperture, we examined the relationship between vowel and syllable aperture in two segmentation experiments. Initial findings from a metalinguistic repetition task supported the hypothesis, revealing significant segmentation differences due to vowel aperture across a range of bi-syllabic stimuli. These findings were also supported in an additional online experiment, in which a fragment detection task revealed a syllabic cross-over interaction due to vowel aperture. Evidence from these experiments suggest that multiple, independent cues are used in French syllable segmentation, including vowel aperture.
Goslin
Jeremy
J
School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK. jeremy@jeremygoslin.info
Frauenfelder
Ulrich H
UH
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult