Syllabic Context Research Articles

Prosodic location modulates listener’s perception of novel German sounds

Interaction of sounds on the melodic tier (segments) with prosodic and phonotactic structure (syllabic context) in cross-language perception is not explicitly addressed by models of second language phonology (e.g., Perceptual Assimilation Model: Best, 1995). At initial stages of foreign language exposure, learners rely on position-specific phonetic detail more than native speakers or advanced learners, thus mappings according to prosodic and phonotactic context are a crucial factor in early interlanguage phonological development. In a perceptual assimilation experiment, we manipulated syllable position (onset vs. coda) and phonotactic complexity (simple vs. complex codas) in phonotactically similar languages for auditory presentation of six German obstruents (i.e., familiar [h k ʃ] and novel [ç x p͡f]) to native speakers of American English who had no previous exposure to German. By means of weighted proportions (Park & de Jong, 2008) and overlap scores (Levy, 2009), we found that [h k ʃ p͡f] mapped categorically to English orthographic categories <h>, <k>, <sh>, and <f>, respectively, in all positions, whereas the novel fricatives [ç x] exhibited distinct mapping patterns from each other, from other sounds, and according to syllable position. These results demonstrate profound influences of both low-level prosodic and phonotactic contexts on perceptual assimilation of novel sounds

Las misteriosas /r/ de los adverbios en -mentedel español medieval

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to analyze the affix ‑m(i)entreof modal adverbs in Medieval Spanish, e.g.fuertemientre. The hypothesis is that the non-etymological, epentheticrmay be analyzed from a phonological perspective only, without grammatical or lexical explanations. The paper first reviews the three traditional explanations for the non-etymologicalrin modal adverbs, especially the analogical one, which poses that therof these adverbs is an analogy from the etymologicalrof the temporal adverbm(i)entre. The paper shows the weakness of these traditional analyses. The paper then presents an alternative analysis on phonological basis, which has greater parsimony than traditional explanations, adding typological evidence outside the grammatical field of modal adverbs, and showing that a non-etymologicalrappeared in many Spanish words, and in other Romance languages, in the same phonetic and syllabic contexts as the modal affix ‑m(i)entre. Finally, the paper proposes three causes for the loss of modal ‑m(i)entre: the weakening of intra-paradigmatic support from modal ‑miente, a homonymic clash between modal ‑m(i)entreand temporalm(i)entre, and the generalization of the learned form ‑mente. The paper places the diachronic loss of the modal affix withrin a theoretical frame of multicausality.

Regional variation in the pronunciation of /s/ in the Dutch language area

Abstract This paper reports on an explorative sociophonetic study of the phoneme /s/ in the Dutch language area. Our aim is to investigate the regional variation in the realisation of this phoneme, and to test experimentally the observation of ) that /s/ is sometimes pronounced more like [ ʃ ], especially in the Randstad area (called s-retraction). One hundred native speakers of Dutch produced nineteen monosyllabic words containing /s/ in different syllabic contexts. The speakers were born and raised in one of five regions of the Dutch language area (West Flanders, Flemish Brabant, Netherlands Limburg, South Holland and Groningen). Spectral centre of gravity (CoG) and duration were used to measure the degree of s-retraction. CoG values turned out to be significantly lower (consistent with more retraction) in the regions in The Netherlands than in the Flemish regions. Speakers from South Holland produced significantly shorter /s/ than the other speakers. In conclusion, /s/ shows patterns of regional variation that are not fully in line with the observation forwarded by ). The difference between the Flemish and Dutch regions shows that s-retraction is found in an area larger than the Randstad, possibly pointing towards a North-South pattern of variation.

Phonetic variations and sound changes in Hong Kong Cantonese: Diachronic review, synchronic study and implications for speech sound assessment

The aim of this article was to describe phonetic variations and sound changes in Hong Kong Cantonese (HKC) to provide speech-language pathologists with information about acceptable variants of standard pronunciations for speech sound assessments. Study 1 examined the pattern of variations and changes based on past diachronic research and historical written records. Nine phonetic variations were found. Five in syllable-initial and syllabic contexts: (1) [n-] → [l-], (2) [ŋ-] → Ø-, (3) Ø- → [ŋ-], (4) [kwɔ-] → [kɔ-], (5) syllabic [ŋ̍] → [m̩]; and four in syllable-final contexts: (6) [-ŋ] → [-n], (7) [-n] → [-ŋ], (8) [-k] → [-t], (9) [-t] → [-k]. Historical records demonstrated the pattern of variation and changes in HKC across time. In study 2, a large-scale synchronic study of speakers of differing ages was undertaken to determine acceptable phonetic variations of HKC for speech sound assessments. In the synchronic study, single-words were elicited from 138 children (10;8–12;4) and 112 adults (18–45 years) who spoke Cantonese and lived in Hong Kong. Synchronic evidence demonstrated five acceptable variants in syllable-initial and syllabic contexts: (1) [n-] → [l-], (2) [ŋ-] → Ø-, (3) Ø- → [ŋ-], (4) [kwɔ-] → [kɔ-] and (5) syllabic [ŋ̍] → [m̩] and four incomplete sound changes in syllable-final contexts: (6) [-ŋ] → [-n], (7) [-n] → [-ŋ], (8) [-k] → [-t] and (9) [-t] → [-k]. The incomplete sound changes may still be accepted as variants in speech sound assessments unless related speech problems are indicated.

Comparação da aquisição de /k/ e /g/ e das sequências fonéticas [kw] e [gw] no pb - variáveis intervenientes e status fonológico

OBJETIVO:analisar e comparar a aquisição das sequências fonéticas [kw] e [gw] e das plosivas /k/ e /g/ em crianças com desenvolvimento típico de fala, considerando variáveis intervenientes linguísticas e extralinguísticas.MÉTODOS: analisou-se 3193 palavras, a partir de 213 entrevistas de crianças com desenvolvimento fonológico típico. Utilizou-se a Avaliação Fonológica da Criança, sendo selecionadas todas as palavras contendo as sequências fonéticas [kw] e [gw] e os fonemas /k/ e /g/. As variáveis dependentes analisadas foram: produção correta e produção incorreta dos segmentos referidos. As variáveis intervenientes: sexo, idade, tonicidade, número de sílabas na palavra, contexto silábico precedente, contexto silábico seguinte, posição na palavra, sonoridadee complexidade do segmento. Utilizou-se o pacote computacional VARBRUL, com nível de significância de 5%.RESULTADOS:as variáveis selecionadas para a produção correta de [kw] e [gw] foram a idade e a posição na palavra. Para /k/ e /g/ foram o sexo, a idade, contexto silábico precedente, contexto silábico seguinte e sonoridade. Ao analisar todas as palavras que compuseram o corpus dessa pesquisa, o programa selecionou a complexidade do segmento como relevante na aquisição dos segmentos analisados, sendo maior probabilidade de produção correta para os fonemas /k/ e /g/.CONCLUSÃO:o fato de variáveis distintas serem significantes à aquisição de /k, g/ e ao [kw, gw] mostrou um tratamento fonológico diferenciado das crianças frente a esses sons. Parece que as sequências [kw] e [gw] podem ser consideradas segmentos complexos do PB, uma vez que a complexidade do segmento foi selecionada como estatisticamente significante no corpus estudado.

Visual cue salience depends on place of articulation and syllabic context

This study is on audio-visual perceptual intelligibility of consonants in intervocalic clusters (VC1C2V). Previous studies have yielded inconsistent findings on perceptual salience of different stop consonants and very few have tested salience in clusters. Consequently, it has been unclear as to whether greater or less perceptual salience leads to greater degree of place assimilation. In Korean, labials are often produced with more gestural overlap than velars in C1. I tested whether labials are perceptually more or less salient in both audio and audio-visual conditions. VC and CV syllables spoken by both English and Korean speakers were first embedded in noise and spliced together for non-overlapping VCCV sequences. Korean listeners identified the two consonants in either audio or AV presentations. A confusion matrix analysis for each stop consonant shows that in C1 there is asymmetric improvement with the addition of videos for labial consonants only, while in C2 this asymmetry was not found. The result suggests that listeners make differential use of visual cues depending on place of articulation and syllabic context. Also, the result supports the talker enhancement view of sound change, which assumes that talkers are aware of perceptual salience and enhance (with less gestural overlap) the weak contrast.

Music and Lyrics Interactions and their Influence on Recognition of Sung Words: An Investigation of Word Frequency, Rhyme, Metric Stress, Vocal Timbre, Melisma, and Repetition Priming

This study investigated several factors presumed to influence the intelligibility of song lyrics. Twenty-seven participants listened to recordings of musical passages sung in English; each passage consisted of a brief musical phrase sung by a solo voice. Six vocalists produced the corpus of sung phrases. Eight hypotheses derived from common phonological and prosodic principles were tested. Intelligibility of lyrics was degraded: (i) when archaic language was used; (ii) when words were set in melismatic rather than syllabic contexts; (iii) when the musical rhythm did not match the prosodic speech rhythm; and (iv) when successive target words rhymed. Intelligibility of lyrics was facilitated: (i) when words contained diphthongs rather than monophthongs; (ii) when a word from an immediately previous passage reappeared; (iii) when a syllabic setting of a word was preceded by a melismatic setting of the same word. No difference in word intelligibility was observed between music theater singers and opera singers.

Nonce words show that Russian yer alternations are governed by the grammar

Even though vowel deletion in Russian is lexically-restricted, the identity of alternating vowels is partially predictable: only mid vowels delete, but even mid vowels cannot delete in some contexts. We report on two nonce word studies asking Russian speakers to rate paradigms in which a vowel was deleted. The ratings strongly correlated with the quality of the vowel: deletion of mid vowels was rated higher than deletion of high and low vowels. We also found that deletion in certain syllabic contexts was rated as ungrammatical: deletion cannot affect words that have a complex coda, and it cannot create clusters with a medial sonorant. Finally, deletion in disyllables was rated higher than deletion in monosyllables, reflecting the trends in the lexicon. These results suggest that even for this lexically-restricted alternation, speakers have formed a phonological generalization.

As variáveis intervenientes na produção do onset complexo mediante uma análise silábica

OBJETIVO: verificar e comparar as estratégias de reparo e a influência das variáveis linguísticas (silábicas e prosódicas) e extralinguísticas na produção da sílaba com Onset Complexo em crianças com desenvolvimento fonológico típico e atípico. MÉTODO: foi analisada a fala de 48 crianças, 24 com desenvolvimento fonológico típico e 24 com desenvolvimento fonológico atípico, equiparados em relação ao sexo, entre 2:6 a 5:5;29 (grupo típico) e 5:0 a 7:11;29 (grupo atípico). As amostras foram coletadas transversalmente, com base no instrumento Avaliação Fonológica da Criança. Foram analisadas palavras que apresentaram como alvo o onset complexo, com um corpus de 278 palavras do desenvolvimento típico e 460 do desenvolvimento atípico. Foram consideradas como variantes da variável dependente a produção correta, apagamento de C², apagamento de C¹, apagamento de sílaba, epêntese, metátese e idiossincrasias. Como variáveis independentes intervenientes consideraram-se os fatores extralinguísticos idade, sexo e tipo de desenvolvimento e as variáveis linguísticas tonicidade, número de sílabas, contexto silábico seguinte e precedente, posição na palavra, complexidade do onset na própria sílaba e pé métrico. Os dados de fala foram analisados estatisticamente por meio do VARBRUL. RESULTADO: o programa estatístico selecionou como significante para a produção correta e para os outros tipos de estratégias de reparo do onset complexo as variáveis sexo, idade, tipo de desenvolvimento, posição na palavra, pé métrico e contexto silábico seguinte. CONCLUSÃO: verificou-se que as variáveis linguísticas e extralinguísticas influenciam significantemente na produção do onset complexo em crianças com ambos os desenvolvimentos. A estratégia de reparo mais utilizada foi apagamento de C².

Influência do contexto silábico da palavra no julgamento perceptivo-auditivo do ceceio produzido por pré-escolares

OBJETIVOS: investigar a ocorrência do ceceio em fricativas produzidas por crianças com alterações oclusais e analisar a influência do contexto silábico da fricativa no julgamento auditivo do ceceio. M ÉTODO: estudo prospectivo, em que as gravações de 428 palavras, produzidas por 15 crianças (idade média de 5 anos e 1 mês) foram julgadas auditivamente por três fonoaudiólogos com experiência no julgamento de alterações de fala. As palavras utilizadas foram constituídas pelas consoantes fricativas não vozeadas, alveolar e pós-alveolar, inseridas em posição tônica, precedida das vogais [i, a, u]. Obteve-se concordância intra-juiz (quase perfeita) e inter-juiz (total, 100%) previamente à análise dos aspectos de interesse. RESULTADOS: embora presente na fala de todas as crianças, identificou-se ceceio em 25,23% do total das palavras. Houve aumento significante do ceceio para: (a) fricativa alveolar em ataque inicial, (b) fricativa alveolar em ataque inicial em relação à coda medial (p=0,001) e (c) fricativa alveolar em relação à fricativa pós- alveolar (p<0,001). Não se observou diminuição do ceceio em relação às vogais co-articuladas. CONCLUSÃO: a ocorrência do ceceio é dependente do contexto silábico, (com maior ocorrência na fricativa alveolar, em posição de ataque inicial), devendo o mesmo ser considerado para fins clínicos e de pesquisa sobre o ceceio.

Duration of American English vowels and its effects on intelligibility for native and non-native speakers

Durations of 12 American English vowels were measured for English-, Chinese-, and Korean-native speakers. Results showed that vowel duration was significantly affected by speaker groups. That is, vowels produced by English- and Korean-native speakers were significantly longer than vowels produced by Chinese-native speakers. The patterns of vowel duration as a function of vowel category were quite similar between native and non-native speakers. However, Mandarin Chinese vowels did not differ in duration across Chinese-native speakers, while durations of Korean vowels were significantly different across Korean-native speakers. These results suggest that non-native speakers were able to follow the duration pattern of native speakers in their vowel production. When vowel duration was equalized across vowel category with the central vowel nucleus remained, vowel intelligibility significantly dropped about 5% compared to vowels presented in the syllabic context for native and non-native speakers. The perceptual...

When variability matters more than meaning: The effect of lexical forms on use of phonemic contrasts.

During the first half of the 2nd year of life, infants struggle to use phonemic distinctions in label-object association tasks. Prior experiments have demonstrated that exposure to the phonemes in distinct lexical forms (e.g., /d/ and /t/ in daddy and tiger, respectively) facilitates infants' use of phonemic contrasts but also that they struggle to generalize the use of phonemic contrasts to novel syllabic contexts (Thiessen, 2007; Thiessen & Yee, 2010). Further, in prior research, infants have been provided only with experience in lexical forms that refer to novel objects, while many lexical forms in the natural environment do not have easily identified visual referents. The experiments in this article show that even lexical forms without referents can facilitate use of phonemic contrasts. Additionally, the results indicate that when lexical forms provide infants with enough variability (for example, a consonant followed by multiple different vowels), infants are able to generalize to novel contexts.

Statistical modeling of phonological rules through linguistic hierarchies

This paper describes our research aimed at acquiring a generalized probability model for alternative phonetic realizations in conversational speech. For all of our experiments, we utilize the summit landmark-based speech recognition framework. The approach begins with a set of formal context-dependent phonological rules, applied to the baseforms in the recognizer’s lexicon. A large speech corpus is phonetically aligned using a forced recognition procedure. The probability model is acquired by observing specific realizations expressed in these alignments. A set of context-free rules is used to parse words into substructure, in order to generalize context-dependent probabilities to other words that share the same sub-word context. The model maps phones to sub-word units probabilistically in a finite state transducer framework, capturing phonetic predictions based on local phonemic, morphologic, and syllabic contexts. We experimented within two domains: the mercury flight reservation domain and the jupiter weather domain. The baseline system used the same set of phonological rules for lexical expansion, but with no probabilities for the alternates. We achieved 14.4% relative reduction in concept error rate for jupiter and 16.5% for mercury.

Variability in /s/ production in children and adults: evidence from dynamic measures of spectral mean.

Previous research has found developmental decreases in temporal variability in speech. Relatively less work has examined spectral variability, and, in particular, variability in consonant spectra. This article examined variability in productions of the consonant /s/ by adults and by 3 groups of children, with mean ages of 3;11 (years;months), 5;04, and 8;04. Specifically, it measured the influence of age, phonetic context, and syllabic context on variability. Spectral variability was estimated by measuring dynamic spectral characteristics of multiple productions of /s/ in sV, spV, and swV sequences, where the vowel was either /a/ or /u/. Mean duration, variability in duration, and coarticulation were also measured. Children were found to produce /s/ with greater temporal and spectral variability than adults. Duration and coarticulation were comparable across the 4 age groups. Spectral variability was greater in swV contexts than in sV or spV sequences. The lack of consistent effects of phonetic context on spectral variability suggests that the developmental differences were related to subtle variability in place of articulation for /s/ in the children's productions.

Phonetic variation in voiced obstruents in North-Central Peninsular Spanish

In Spanish, /b, d, [vvplosive]/ are usually spirantized to voiced approximants in all syllabic contexts after a continuant sound. However, in North-Central Peninsular Spanish (NCS), spirantization interacts with coda devoicing, yielding voiceless fricatives. In the majority of cases, coda /b, d, [vvplosive]/ occur in stressed syllables. This work examines whether or not stress is a factor in the likelihood of frication and devoicing of coda /b, d, [vvplosive]/ in this dialect. An acoustic study was conducted of nine native speakers from NCS. These speakers were tested on nonce words with /b, d, [vvplosive]/ in coda position in both stressed and unstressed syllables. Measurements were made of vowel and consonant duration, presence and absence of frication and voicing, and voicing duration. The results show that frication is more likely in stressed syllables than in unstressed syllables. This suggests that in stressed syllables, a higher subglottal pressure produces higher airflow across the glottis, thereby favoring frication. In turn, frication inhibits voicing due to conflicting aerodynamic requirements between the two. We conclude that stress is a factor in spirantization and that it may indirectly affect the voicing properties of /b, d, [vvplosive]/.

Brain plasticity in behavioral and neuromagnetic measures: A perceptual training study

The present study investigated brain plasticity in Japanese adults learning the English /l–r/ distinction. Both behavioral and brain (MEG) measures were used. Training was designed to mimic the listening experience of infants who are exposed to the exaggerated acoustic events contained in infant-directed speech (‘‘motherese’’). A multimedia software program incorporated major features conducive to perceptual learning. The program consisted of 12 1-h training sessions. Pre- and post-training measures were collected from nine subjects including two controls. The MEG experiments examined training effects in preattentive discrimination versus categorization conditions. An average improvement of 21.7% was obtained behaviorally. The training effect was significant for all factors of speaker, vowel, and syllabic context. Perceptual learning generalized to three untrained voices. No effects were observed in the two control subjects. Consistent with the behavioral results, the MEG data showed significantly improved mismatch responses in the left hemisphere. Both behavioral and brain data indicated that the learned phonetic boundary in Japanese subjects did not match that of the American listeners. This pattern of results suggests the existence of substantial neural plasticity in adulthood as well as a potential limit. [Work supported by NIH, HFSP, and the Talaris Research Institute.]

Effects of consonantal context on perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by Japanese listeners.

This study investigated the extent to which adult Japanese listeners' perceived phonetic similarity of American English (AE) and Japanese (J) vowels varied with consonantal context. Four AE speakers produced multiple instances of the 11 AE vowels in six syllabic contexts /b-b, b-p, d-d, d-t, g-g, g-k/ embedded in a short carrier sentence. Twenty-four native speakers of Japanese were asked to categorize each vowel utterance as most similar to one of 18 Japanese categories [five one-mora vowels, five two-mora vowels, plus/ei, ou/ and one-mora and two-mora vowels in palatalized consonant CV syllables, C(j)a(a), C(j)u(u), C(j)o(o)]. They then rated the "category goodness" of the AE vowel to the selected Japanese category on a seven-point scale. None of the 11 AE vowels was assimilated unanimously to a single J response category in all context/speaker conditions; consistency in selecting a single response category ranged from 77% for /eI/ to only 32% for /ae/. Median ratings of category goodness for modal response categories were somewhat restricted overall, ranging from 5 to 3. Results indicated that temporal assimilation patterns (judged similarity to one-mora versus two-mora Japanese categories) differed as a function of the voicing of the final consonant, especially for the AE vowels, /see text/. Patterns of spectral assimilation (judged similarity to the five J vowel qualities) of /see text/ also varied systematically with consonantal context and speakers. On the basis of these results, it was predicted that relative difficulty in the identification and discrimination of AE vowels by Japanese speakers would vary significantly as a function of the contexts in which they were produced and presented.

Phonological and phonotactic influences on perception of two non‐native vowel contrasts

Listeners’ native phonology constrains their perception of non‐native phonetic distinctions. Although most non‐native contrasts are discriminated poorly, recent findings that certain contrasts are discriminated well led to development of a ‘‘perceptual assimilation model’’ (PAM), which proposes that the perceptual assimilation of non‐native phones to native categories predicts discrimination performance [e.g., Best et al., JEP:HPP 14, 345–360 (1988)]. The current study investigated native phonotactic influences on three assimilation patterns. Non‐native contrasts that: (1) assimilate to two categories (TC) and show excellent discrimination; (2) assimilate equally to a single category (SC) and show poor discrimination; (3) assimilate as a category goodness difference (CG) and show good discrimination. American adults labeled and discriminated lip‐rounding contrasts among Norwegian high front vowels [/i/–/y/; /barred you/–/y/] in CV’s and CVC’s. In both contexts, Norwegian /i/ of course was assimilated to English /i/; /barred you/ was assimilated to /u/. Although /y/ was assimilated equally to /barred you/ or /i/ in CVCs, it was virtually always called /i/ in CVs, compatible with the English phonotactic constraint against final lax vowels. Thus, /barred you/–/y/ showed TC assimilation and good discrimination in both syllabic contexts. In CVs, /i/–/y/ showed SC assimilation and poor discrimination; in CVCs, it showed TC or CG assimilation and good discrimination.

Contextual effects in the perception of naturally produced vowels

Vowels excised from the phonetically and dialectically rich DARPA TIMIT acoustic‐phonetic database [L. Lamel et al., Proc., DARPA Speech Recognition Workshop, Rpt. No. SAIC‐86/1546, 100–109 (1986)] were presented to listeners in an identification task. The identification data were gathered both to serve as a performance benchmark for a set of automatic speech recognition experiments, and to investigate some of the acoustic and linguistic factors that influence the perception of naturally produced vowels. Vowels were presented to listeners in isolation (i.e., no context), in CVC context and in syllabic context. Differences in percent correct were calculated between no‐context and context conditions, where correct was defined as agreement with vowel transcriptions supplied with the TIMIT database. Preliminary analyses of the identification data indicate that: (1) overall improvements in identification accuracy were comparable for both CVC and syllabic contexts (approximately 11%, on average, above the overall no‐context identification accuracy of 60%); (2) improvements were approximately four times larger for lax vowels than for tense vowels; and (3) identification consistency among listeners was greater than between listeners and the “correct” phonetic transcription. Acoustic analyses of the vowel tokens that are currently being performed, in order to identify spectral and/or durational attributes that correlate with the identification data.Vowels excised from the phonetically and dialectically rich DARPA TIMIT acoustic‐phonetic database [L. Lamel et al., Proc., DARPA Speech Recognition Workshop, Rpt. No. SAIC‐86/1546, 100–109 (1986)] were presented to listeners in an identification task. The identification data were gathered both to serve as a performance benchmark for a set of automatic speech recognition experiments, and to investigate some of the acoustic and linguistic factors that influence the perception of naturally produced vowels. Vowels were presented to listeners in isolation (i.e., no context), in CVC context and in syllabic context. Differences in percent correct were calculated between no‐context and context conditions, where correct was defined as agreement with vowel transcriptions supplied with the TIMIT database. Preliminary analyses of the identification data indicate that: (1) overall improvements in identification accuracy were comparable for both CVC and syllabic contexts (approximately 11%, on average, above the overa...

Hearing acoustic details of speech. II. Detection of temporal gaps in frication noise

This paper focuses on the detection of temporal gaps in the frication noise of the syllable /t∫a/. A token of /t∫a/ produced by a female talker was digitized at 20 kHz, output via a D/A converter and presented at ∼65 dB SL on each interval of a 2IFC task. In one randomly chosen interval, the syllable contained a 1–20‐ms temporal gap at the temporal center of the 183‐ms frication noise. Gaps were obtained by multiplying the corresponding sample points by (1 − k). Values of k were 0.8 and 1.0 for partial and silent gaps [Forrest and Green, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82 1933–1943 (1987)]. Three normal‐hearing listeners were asked to decide which interval contained a (silent or a partially filled) temporal gap. Gap detection was studied: (a) for frication noise excerpted from the syllable and presented in isolation; and (b) for the same frication noise presented in syllabic context. Gap‐detection thresholds were interpolated at the 75%‐correct level from probits fitted to 7–8 point psychometric functions. Thresholds in isolation were 3.5 and 4.0 ms, for k of 1.0 and 0.8. Thresholds in context were similar to those in isolation. Gap thresholds for the final position fricative in the word “watch” /wat∫/ will be described also. [Work supported by OCAST Grant HSO‐005 and Presbyterian Health Foundation.]