Stochastic time analysis of syllable-referential intervals and simplex onsets

Abstract

We pursue an analysis of the relation between qualitative syllable parses and their quantitative phonetic consequences. To do this, we express the statistics of a symbolic organization corresponding to a syllable parse in terms of continuous phonetic parameters which quantify the timing of the consonants and vowels that make up syllables: consonantal plateau durations, vowel durations, and their variances. These parameters can be estimated from continuous phonetic data. This enables analysis of the link between symbolic phonological form and the continuous phonetics in which this form is manifest. Pursuing such an analysis, we illustrate the predictions of the syllabic organization corresponding to simplex onsets and derive a number of previously experimentally observed and simulation results. Specifically, we derive not only the canonical phonetic manifestations of simplex onsets but also the result that, under certain conditions we make precise, the phonetic indices of the simplex onset organization change to a range of values characteristic of the complex onset organization. Finally, we explore the behavior of phonetic indices for syllabic organization over progressively increasing sizes of lexical samples, thereby concomitantly diversifying the phonetic context over which these indices are taken.