Dental-to-velar perceptual assimilation:
A cross-linguistic study of the perception of dental stop+/l/ clusters

Pierre Hallé (1) , Catherine T. Best (2)

1 LPP - LPP - Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie - UMR 7018
2 MARCS - MARCs Auditory Laboratories

French listeners perceive illegal /tl/ and /dl/ clusters as legal /kl/ and /gl/, suggesting that /dl, tl/ undergo “phonotactic perceptual assimilation” to the phonetically most similar permissible clusters (Hallé, Segui, Frauenfelder, and Meunier, 1998). However, without a comparison to native speakers of a language allowing initial /tl, dl/, other explanations remain open (e.g., universal phonetic biases). Experiment 1 compared native French and Hebrew listeners on perception of Hebrew /tl/-/kl/ and /dl/-/gl/. On a language-specific phonotactics account, these contrasts should be difficult for listeners whose language disallows initial /tl, dl/ while allowing /kl, gl/ (French), but not for listeners whose language permits all four clusters (Hebrew). Indeed, French but not Hebrew listeners showed difficulty discriminating /tl/-/kl/, and tended to categorize the initial consonant of /tl/ as /k/; analogous effects for /dl/-/gl/ were weaker. Experiment 2 tested speakers of American English, which also disallows initial /tl, dl/ but realizes stop-voicing differently than French or Hebrew, to examine possible contributions of language-specific phonetic settings. Their performance was similar to that of French listeners, though they had significantly greater difficulty with /dl-/gl/. The results support the proposal of language-specific phonotactic perceptual assimilation, with modest contributions from language-specific phonetic settings.

Mots clés: perception of nonnative speech; consonant clusters; perceptual repair; Hebrew

Domaines: Linguistique

Pierre Hallé, Catherine T. Best. Dental-to-velar perceptual assimilation:
A cross-linguistic study of the perception of dental stop+/l/ clusters. 2007. ⟨halshs-00129735⟩