Haskins Publications

Number	1298
Year	2003
Drawer	24
Entry Date	12/19/2007
Authors	Hallé, P., Best, C.T. & Bachrach, A.
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Publication	Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Barcelona, Spain. August 3-9, 2003. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, pp. 2893-2896.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1298.pdf
Abstract	French listeners tend to hear illegal utterance-initial /tl/ and /dl/ clusters as /kl/ and /gl/, respectively, when speech is produced by French speakers [1, 5]. We re-examined this phenomenon, once called “phonotactic perceptual assimilation,” in a cross-linguistic design using Modern Hebrew. In Hebrew, virtually all the obstruent-liquid clusters are permissible, including /dl, tl/. French and Israeli listeners were tested on their discrimination performance for the /dl/-/gl- and /tl/-/kl/ contrasts, using monosyllables such as /tla, kla/ produced by a native speaker of Hebrew. French listeners showed substantial difficulty at discrimination these contrasts -especially /tl/-/kl/- whereas Israeli listeners experienced a slight difficulty only for /tl/-/kl/. French listeners categorised as velar the initial consonant of the /tl/ items and, but much less often, that of the /dl/ items. Altogether then, the /tl/-to-/kl/ perceptual assimilation is largely language-specific. Yet, it might be partly determined by universal perceptual constraints that seem to emerge in Modern Hebrew.
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