Production and perception of phonetically “non-native” clusters by Georgian native speakers

Abstract

This study examines the role of native inter-consonant timing patterns in perception and production of word-initial consonant clusters, asking how phonotactically native clusters with non-native timing patterns are perceived and produced by speakers of a cluster-heavy language. We tested Georgian speakers in two experiments using CCV/CVCV stimuli produced by a French talker. Georgian is a cluster-heavy language with a relatively long inter-consonant lag, often resulting in transitional vowels between two consonants within a cluster. French onset clusters have shorter inter-consonant lag than Georgian ones. In Experiment 1 (shadowing), Georgian participants (n = 14) were exposed to French CCV/CVCV stimuli and asked to produce what they heard. In Experiment 2 (discrimination), the same Georgian participants heard the same French stimuli in AX pairs and determined whether the two sequences (A and X) were the same or different. The results from the two experiments suggest that Georgian participants often confused French CCV (without any vocalic transition) with French CVCV. The confusion occurred almost exclusively when the first vowel of CVCV was /ø/, which is acoustically similar to the transitional vowel in Georgian, but did not seem to stem from Georgian speakers' incapability of producing French short-lag CCV. We claim that native inter-consonant timing patterns influence perception and production of consonant clusters even when the clusters are phonotactically licit in one’s native language.