Confusability of Bengali consonants and its relation to phonological dissimilarity

Abstract

Language-specific consonant similarity can be measured indirectly by looking at the phoneme inventory, the lexicon (e.g. cooccurrence restrictions), or the phonology (e.g. processes that take the notion of similarity of dissimilarity into account). A more direct approach involves the use of the confusion matrix. For Bengali, thus far, consonant similarity has only been measured indirectly, through the lexicon and phonology. Previous studies (Khan 2006, 2012) claim that Bengali speakers judge the similarity of consonants in echo reduplication (similar to English doctor-schmoctor), where the initial consonant of the base is systematically replaced with a phonologically dissimilar consonant in the reduplicant. This measurement of similarity assumes a set of features assigned language-specific weights; for example, [voice] is weighted more heavily that [spread glottis], to explain why speakers treat the pair [t, th] as more similar than the pair [t, d]. But does the measurement of similarity inherent in the echo reduplicative construction correspond to the relative perceptibility of different consonant contrasts? The current study compares the relative confusability of Bengali consonants produced in noise with the claims of phonological notions of similarity associated with echo reduplication.