Abstract
An unstressed vowel in English commonly tends to be weakened and deleted. When an unstressed vowel between [s] and a voiceless stop as in ‘s(V)CV’ is deleted, phonological opacity might arise since a voiceless stop would be aspirated before a stressed vowel, and English prohibits such a sequence of [s] and an aspirated stop. The goals of this study are to investigate whether such phonological opacity virtually arises in English and to see how English native speakers deal with the opacity and perceive the words correctly. Results showed that schwa deletion resulted in phonological opacity with respect to aspiration. English speakers, however, had little problem restoring the deleted vowel and could resolve the opacity by means of VOT that played a very crucial role as an acoustic cue in the processes.
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