Scottish Gaelic, an endangered Celtic language, demonstrates alternations in word-initial consonants, as in “pòg” [phok] 'kisses' vs “phòg” [fok] 'kissed.' This process, called lenition, leads to apparent neutralizations of Gaelic segments, for example of the [f] of “ phòg” with [f] of “foghlam” [foɫəm] “education,” which is not caused by lenition. A perception experiment can show whether listeners hear any residual difference between lenited segments (e.g., [f]<-[ph]) and the phonetically similar segments ([f]<-[f]). This project used a gating study to investigate when in the word listeners determine which type of sound they are hearing. Preliminary results from 17 native Gaelic listeners indicate that listeners cannot distinguish lenited from phonetically matched consonants (e.g., the two types of [f]) from cues in the consonant itself, but can distinguish both from the unlenited phonologically matched consonants (e.g., [ph]) very accurately. Listeners become able to distinguish lenited from phonetically matched segments (the two types of [f]) during either the following vowel or the segment after that, depending on what coarticulatory cues with the latter parts of the word are available. Thus, listeners need enough acoustic information to provide lexical disambiguation in order to determine the morphological source of lenited sounds.
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November 2013
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November 01 2013
Perception of Scottish Gaelic alternating (leniting) consonants
Natasha L. Warner;
Natasha L. Warner
Dept. of Linguist, Univ. of Arizona, Box 210028, Tucson, AZ 85721-0028, [email protected]
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Ian Clayton;
Ian Clayton
Dept. of English, Boise State Univ., Boise City, ID
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Andrew Carnie;
Andrew Carnie
Linguist, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
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Muriel Fisher;
Muriel Fisher
Linguist, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
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Dan Brenner;
Dan Brenner
Linguist, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
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Michael Hammond;
Michael Hammond
Linguist, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
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Diana Archangeli;
Diana Archangeli
Linguist, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
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Adam Ussishkin
Adam Ussishkin
Linguist, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
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Natasha L. Warner
Ian Clayton
Andrew Carnie
Muriel Fisher
Dan Brenner
Michael Hammond
Diana Archangeli
Adam Ussishkin
Dept. of Linguist, Univ. of Arizona, Box 210028, Tucson, AZ 85721-0028, [email protected]
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 134, 4070 (2013)
Citation
Natasha L. Warner, Ian Clayton, Andrew Carnie, Muriel Fisher, Dan Brenner, Michael Hammond, Diana Archangeli, Adam Ussishkin; Perception of Scottish Gaelic alternating (leniting) consonants. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 November 2013; 134 (5_Supplement): 4070. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4830860
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