Detection of liaison consonants in speech processing in French: Experimental data and theoretical implications

Noël Nguyen (1) , Sophie Wauquier-Gravelines (2) , Leonardo Lancia (1) , Betty Tuller (3)

1 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage
2 LLING - Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes
3 Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences

The goal of the present study is to better understand the mechanisms involved in the processing of liaison consonants by listeners in French. Previous work (Wauquier-Gravelines 1996) showed that liaison consonants are more difficult to detect than word-initial consonants in a phoneme-detection task. We examined to what extent such differences are attributable to the consonants' phonetic properties, and we also compared the perception of liaison consonants with that of fixed word-final and word-medial consonants, as well as word-initial ones. The results suggest that liaison consonants have a specific perceptual status. Implications for both autosegmental and exemplar-based theories of liaison are discussed.

Mots clés: liaison; phonology; phonetics; French; speech perception

Domaines: Linguistique

Noël Nguyen, Sophie Wauquier-Gravelines, Leonardo Lancia, Betty Tuller. Detection of liaison consonants in speech processing in French: Experimental data and theoretical implications. Pilar Prieto. Segmental and Prosodic Issues in Romance Phonology, John Benjamins, pp.3-23, 2007, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. ⟨hal-00173545⟩