An acoustic study of [liquid + stop] sequences by native and second‐language speakers of English.

Abstract

Since the initial work of Mann [Percept. Psychophys. 28, 407–12, (1980)], numerous studies have used liquid + stop clusters in VCCV frames to investigate context effects of liquids on stop perception. However, acoustical studies of related production data have thus far been very limited. The current study will present results of acoustic analyzes of such utterances sampled from 67 native speakers of English (57 from the Canadian Prairie Provinces) and 44 second language speakers of English from a variety of native language backgrounds. The objectives of this work are, first, to understand the nature of variation and covariation of production patterns across a moderate sample of native speakers; second, to investigate how native language background affects production of these sequences (especially those with phonetic realizations of postvocalic liquids that may be quite different from those of English). A key focus will be nature and magnitude of empirical patterns of covariation in relation to perceptual context effects observed in the literature.