This study examines the role of abstractness during the activation of a lexical representation. Abstractness and conflict are directly modeled in our approach by invoking lexical representations in terms of contrastive phonological features. In two priming experiments with English nouns differing only in vowel height of their stem vowels (e.g.,…

The phonetic context in which word-medial flaps occur (in contrast to [t[superscript h]]) in American English is explored. The analysis focuses on stress placement, following phone, and syllabification. In Experiment 1, subjects provided their preference for [t[superscript h]] or [flapped t] in bisyllabic nonce words. Consistent with previous…

Investigated the behavior of Dutch rising nuclear contours as a function of changes in pitch range by asking listeners to rate such contours on perceived attributes believed to be expressed through variations in pitch range. (Author/VWL)

Examines how multiple phonetic constraints interact to produce universal sound patterns and how the resulting systems may differ. A computational model of emergent syllable systems is presented that is based on a set of functional constraints on syllable systems and the assumption that language structure emerges through cumulative change over…

Some key issues in the study of intonation in language varieties are presented and discussed with reference to recent research on the intonation of New Zealand English. The particular issues that are highlighted include the determination of the intonational phonological categories of a language variety, and the attribution of varietal differences…

Schwa epenthesis and schwa deletion are two types of phonological variation that occur frequently in Dutch. In this study, a series of picture-naming experiments investigated whether schwa epenthesis and schwa deletion are arbitrary processes or whether they are contextually driven and take place in speech-planning process. Findings are discussed…