Syllable structure and units of analysis in speech perception

Abstract

Syllables or their constituents, such as onsets and rhymes, may be basic units in speech perception. If so, then recognition of a target phoneme might be influenced more by its syllabic context (i.e., other phonemes in the same syllable or constituent) than by other aspects of phonetic context. To investigate the influence of syllable structure on phoneme perception, subjects in three response-time experiments were instructed to identify a target phoneme, ignoring variation in an adjacent phoneme. In one condition, the adjacent phoneme was held constant; in a second condition, contextual variation was irrelevant to target identity. In two experiments, context varied either within the same syllabic onset or in an adjacent syllable. The third experiment involved varying an adjacent phoneme either in the same syllable as the target or in a neighboring syllable. If the syllable or onset is perceived as a unit, then varying context within that unit should slow target recognition more than varying context outside the syllable. The results have implications for the role of syllable structure in speech perception. [Research supported by AFOSR and BRSG.]