| Abstract | When talkers are asked to produce isochronous sequences of monosyllables, they fail in systematic ways, as measured by conventional syllable onset-onset intervals. Listeners, however, hear these attempts as isochronous and hear sequences with equal onset-onset intervals as anisochronous. The agreement between talkers and listeners and the discrepancy between their results and conventional measurements are apparently symptomatic either of a symmetrical production-perception illusion or of systematic measurement error. We examine the second possibility, establishing, in the light of information in the phonetics literature, that the demarcation of syllable onset is flawed if it is intended to mark acoustic reflections of articulatory onset. Moreover, it is flawed in systematic ways that explain many of the talkers’ apparent deviations from isochrony, Next we attempt to identify what talkers align temporally in isochronous productions and how that it is a syllable-internal event (as other investigators have also recognized), and not syllable onset. The syllable-internal event appears to be an acoustic reflection of vowel production. |
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