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Durational correlates for differentiating consonant sequences in Russian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2008

Lisa Davidson  and
Kevin Roon
Lisa Davidson
Affiliation:
New York Universitylisa.davidson@nyu.edu, kdroon@nyu.edu
Kevin Roon
Affiliation:
New York Universitylisa.davidson@nyu.edu, kdroon@nyu.edu
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Abstract

In Russian, the same consonant sequences are permitted in various phonotactic environments. The presence of a word boundary or reduced vowel can be phonologically contrastive, and both learners and experienced listeners may rely on fine acoustic cues to discriminate between phonotactic possibilities. In this study, durational characteristics of consonant sequences are examined to establish whether speakers use duration to distinguish (a) word-initial clusters (#C1C2), (b) consonant–schwa–consonant sequences (#C1əC2), and (c) sequences divided by a word boundary (C1#C2). Both monolingual native Russian speakers and bilingual Russian–English speakers produced several types of target sequences: stop+consonant, fricative+consonant, and nasal+consonant. Results show that C2 is significantly longer in C1#C2 than in other sequences. For #C1C2, when C1 is a stop, there is no significant difference in duration when compared with other sequence types, though C1s of other manners are significantly shorter. Differences in C1 burst duration for stops are consonant-specific, but a longer interconsonantal duration is a reliable cue to schwa presence in #C1əC2. These results are discussed with respect to their implications for gestural coordination, segmentation, and language learning.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , August 2008 , pp. 137 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Journal of the International Phonetic Association 2008

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