The perception of German syllabic [n

Abstract

Perception of syllabic [n] was studied using different inflectional forms of the German indefinite article, i.e., ‘‘ein’’ (nom. sing. masc.) versus ‘‘einen’’ (acc. sing. masc.). Inspection of a larger corpus of spoken German revealed that the most frequent pronunciation of ‘‘einen’’ is the allegro form with only a lengthened—not literally bisyllabic—[n]. Identification tests were run with manipulated items of a naturally spoken ‘‘einen.’’ The original utterance consisted of a glottalized [a] segment of 68-, a diphthong of 65-, and a [n] of 49-ms duration produced at a fundamental frequency of about 200 Hz by a female speaker. The duration of the diphthong and the nasal were varied in five steps of approximately 10 ms by doubling/cutting pairs of individual pitch periods. A second set of 25 stimuli was produced by cutting the initial glottalized segment. Analyses of variance revealed highly significant effects of nasal duration and glottalization independent of diphthong duration: Longer nasal segments as well as the presence of glottalization resulted in an increase in ‘‘einen’’ responses. The identification seems to be independent of rate of articulation but not of general speaking rate when the test items are embedded in larger utterances.