On the importance of being noticed: the role of acoustic salience in phonotactics (and casual speech)

Abstract

In the very rich literature on phonotactics, the role of acoustic salience has sometimes been hinted but the topic has never been investigated in depth. In this paper, it is shown that factors like markedness, sonority and the Net Auditory Distance (a concept used in the Beats-and-Binding phonology framework) are not able to explain exhaustively certain phonotactic phenomena. I therefore attempt to bring experimental evidence that the role of salience is apparent in the perception of plateau clusters, i.e., obstruent clusters, nasal clusters and liquid clusters. The hypothesis is that the more salient a consonant, the more easily it will be perceived correctly as the first member of an initial plateau cluster and as the last member of a final plateau cluster. A salience scale is devised based on data from Italian and Dutch casual speech reductions, attested plateau clusters in the world's languages and former experimental studies. The results of the experiment, which presented nonce words containing plateau clusters as stimuli to Italian and Dutch native speakers, confirm the initial hypothesis for nasal and liquid clusters but only partially for obstruent clusters. It is suggested that the proposed salience scale has to be reformulated and that factors other than salience have to be taken into account.