The Sound Of English

The Sound of English



The Sound of English

Answer 2)

Liaison operates in word sequences whose components are closely linked by sense, e.g., article + noun, adjective + noun, personal pronoun + verb, and so forth. This would seem to indicate liaison is primarily active in high-frequency word associations (collocations). Liaison is a form of vestigial enchainement since both involve a follow-through between a final consonant (though otherwise mute in liaison) and an initial vowel. However, what is particularly distinct for both liaison and enchainement is that the final consonant in both cases re-syllabifies with the following vowel. Liaison is therefore an external sandhi phenomenon, that is, a phonological process occurring at word boundaries. Specifically, it is a form of consonant epenthesis and generally, though not always, involves resyllabification.

Like elision (as in *je aime ? j'aime), it can be characterized functionally as a euphonic strategy for avoiding hiatus. If we look at it like this, we are adopting a synchronic approach. This approach does not explain cases where the first word already ends in a consonant, such as tels?amis, and is therefore already perfectly euphonic.

It is also possible to analyse liaison diachronically. With this approach, the liaison consonant has always been there since the days of Latin, and has merely been elided in other contexts over time. So, the s pronounced in mes amis can be seen as simply preserving the s that was always pronounced in meos amicos. Seen in this way, it is mes frères that is exceptional, having lost the s that was pronounced in meos fratres.In VCV nonsense forms (such as /epsilondepsilon/, while both the CV transition and the VC transition are perceptible in isolation, the CV transition dominates identification of the stop consonant. Thus, the question arises, what role, if any, do VC transitions play in word perception? Stimuli were two-syllable English words in which the medial consonant was either a stop or a fricative (e.g., "feeding" and "gravy"). Each word was constructed in three ways: (1) the VC transition was incompatible with the CV in either place, manner of articulation, or both; (2) the VC transition was eliminated and the steady-state portion of first vowel was substituted in its place; and (3) the original word. All versions of a particular word were identical with respect to duration, pitch contour, and amplitude envelope (David, 2000, 46).

While an intelligibility test revealed no differences among the three conditions, data from a paired comparison preference task and an unspeeded lexical decision task indicated that incompatible VC transitions hindered word perception, but lack of VC transitions did not. However, there were clear differences among the three conditions in the speeded lexical decision task for word stimuli, but not for nonword stimuli that were constructed in an analogous fashion. We discuss the use of lexical tasks for speech quality assessment and possible processes by which listeners recognize spoken words.

Consonants are easier than vowels in terms of spelling. A consonant sound is often represented by the same consonant letter ...