A Comparison of Theoretical and Human Syllabification

Jeremy Goslin, Ulrich H. Frauenfelder
2001 Language and Speech  
Phonology is replete with theories and principles governing the process of syllable segmentation. However, with a myriad of conflicting theories available, a major problem facing researchers wishing to apply the syllable unit in models of speech processing is in selecting which of these theories to use in their definition of the syllable. In this thesis, an attempt has been made to judge the merits of the various principles and theories of syllabification applied to French, a syllable-timed
more » ... uage, by comparing the theoretical predictions of these theories with the experimental findings of a series of psycholinguistic syllable segmentation and perception experiments. A number of factors have been found to influence syllable segmentation. These include, the nature of intervocalic consonant clusters and singletons, with preference given to minimal legal syllable onsets, excepting OBLI clusters, which are tautosyllabic. The aperture of the vowel at the nucleus of a syllable, with an open vowel inducing closed syllables, and vice versa. Also, orthographic bias, which, at the onset of literacy can influence syllabification decisions in metalinguistic tasks. In addition, examination of the differences between the syllable onset and offset detection revealed that, if there is a legal syllable onset before the first consonant of an intervocalic consonant cluster/singleton, then there will be a high degree of ambisyllabicity for this segment. These findings suggest that listeners are taking advantage of a number of separate cues when segmenting speech into syllables. However, even when factoring these effects into the segmentation responses of subjects, there is still considerable variability in subject segmentation responses. By implementing the factors found to influence syllabification thus far, it is possible to suggest a set of preference rules which can predict where the boundary is likely to be located, and also to predict in which situations the location of the syllable boundary is likely to be most ambiguous. iii
doi:10.1177/00238309010440040101 pmid:12162693 fatcat:ow3w3gswkzfkzh26mhldvqafeu