Consonant confusability and its relation to phonological dissimilarity

Abstract

Consonant similarity can be measured indirectly through a language’s phoneme inventory, lexicon (e.g. cooccurrence restrictions), or phonology (e.g., processes that take similarity or dissimilarity into account). It can also be measured more directly as confusability in a perception task. Thus far, consonant similarity in Bengali has only been measured indirectly, through the inventory, lexicon, and phonology. Previous studies [Khan (2006)] claim that Bengali speakers judge the similarity of consonants in echo reduplication, where the initial consonant of the base is systematically replaced with a phonologically dissimilar consonant in the reduplicant, e.g., kashi “cough” > kashi-tashi “cough, etc.” but thonga “bag” > *thonga-tonga > thonga-fonga “bags, etc.”). 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 directly to the relative perceptibility of different consonant contrasts? The current study examines data collected in a perception experiment, comparing the relative confusability of Bengali consonants produced in noise with the claims of phonological notions of similarity associated with echo reduplication.