Why [spa] not [psa]? On the perceptual salience of initial /s/‐stop and stop‐/s/ sequences.

Abstract

Initial /s/‐stop clusters occur frequently in the world’s languages, but initial stop‐/s/ clusters are relatively infrequent. Furthermore, there appear to be no languages that contain initial stop‐/s/ clusters, but not /s/‐stop clusters, while the reverse is not true [Morelli, (1999) and (2003)]. This study aims at uncovering a perceptual explanation for these patterns by examining the salience of initial /s/‐stop and stop‐/s/ clusters in Greek, where both sequences are common. Twenty naive Greek adult listeners identified syllables beginning with /sp/, /st/, /sk/, /ps/, /ts/, or /ks/, in two vowel contexts, /a/ and /i/, in real words spoken by ten Greek adult native speakers. The syllables were mixed with parts of Greek multitalker babble using SNRs of −6, 0, and +6 dB and presented to listeners for identification. Results showed significantly poorer identification for the /ps/ and /ks/ clusters than the /ts/ and /s/‐stop clusters, particularly in the −6 and 0 SNRS. There was also a significant interacti...