Investigating the relation between place of articulation markedness and perceptual salience

Abstract

It has been proposed that the POA (places of articulation) markedness scale and the corresponding faithfulness hierarchy are grounded in language-independent phonetic properties of POA (Jun 1995, 2004; Hamilton 1996, Hayes & Steriade 2004). Specifically, the coronals’ higher susceptibility to place assimilation compared to labials and dorsals was argued to follow from poorer acoustic cues to syllable-final (unreleased) coronals (3a): relatively weak VC transitions resulting from the rapid tongue tip movement (Byrd 1992, Jun 1995). The dorsals’ lesser susceptibility to place assimilation compared to labials was argued to follow from better acoustic cues to syllable-final (unreleased) dorsals: a clear convergence of F2 and F3 formants prior to the closure (Jun 1995, cf. Stevens 1989) (3b). The relation between POA markedness and acoustic/perceptual salience has since been assumed by some phonologists (e.g. Steriade 2001, Hayes & Steriade 2004). Yet little cross-linguistic perceptual work has been done to directly verify the claimed POA salience relations and their language-independent status (cf. Hume et al. 1999, Wright 2001, Kingston & Shinya 2003, Winters 2003). The goal of the current study is to explore the relation between POA markedness and salience by conducting a thoroughly controlled cross-linguistic experiment involving the perception of syllable-final stops /p t k/. The focus of the experiment will be the perception of Russian syllable-final stops by listeners of three languages: Russian, English, and Korean