Production, perception, and comprehension of subphonemic detail: Word-Final /s/ in English

Dominic Schmitz

Keywords:

subphonemic detail, pseudowords, production, perception, comprehension, quantitative analysis, acoustic detail, acoustic duration, mouse-tracking, morpho-phonetics, morpho-phonology

Synopsis

The complexities of speech production, perception, and comprehension are enormous. Theoretical approaches of these complexities most recently face the challenge of accounting for findings on subphonemic differences. The aim of the present dissertation is to establish a robust foundation of findings on such subphonemic differences.

One rather popular case for differences in subphonemic detail is word-final /s/ and /z/ in English (henceforth S) as it constitutes a number of morphological functions. Using word-final S, three general issues are investigated. First, are there subphonemic durational differences between different types of word-final S? If there are such differences, how can they be accounted for? Second, can such subphonemic durational differences be perceived? Third, do such subphonemic durational differences influence the comprehension of S?

These questions are investigated by five highly controlled studies: a production task, an implementation of Linear Discriminative Learning, a same-different task, and two number-decision tasks. Using not only real words but also pseudowords as target items, potentially confounding effects of lexical storage are controlled for.

Concerning the first issue, the results show that there are indeed durational differences between different types of word-final S. Non-morphemic S is longest in duration, clitic S is shortest in duration, and plural S duration is in-between non-morphemic S and clitic S durations. It appears that the durational differences are connected to a word’s semantic activation diversity and its phonological certainty. Regarding the second issue, subphonemic durational differences in word-final S can be perceived, with higher levels of perceptibility for differences of 35 ms and higher. In regard to the third issue, subphonemic durational differences are found not to influence the speed of comprehension, but show a significant effect on the process of comprehension. The overall results give raise to a revision of various extant models of speech production, perception, and comprehension.

Reviews

  • Review in English Language and Linguistics by Motoki Saito published February 12, 2024
    [...] The findings of the studies presented in this monograph not only help to disentangle and resolve contradictory unclear results of previous literature on this topic, but also convincingly demonstrate the necessity of reconsidering the view of morphology being a separate encapsulated module independent from phonology/phonetics. Because of its well-organized and easy-to-follow manner of argumentation, this monograph certainly serves well for a wide audience, including students, junior researchers and also experts in the field. [...]

Statistics

Author Biography

Dominic Schmitz, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Dominic Schmitz studied linguistics at the University of Cologne, focusing mainly on phonetics and laboratory phonology. After earning his master’s degree, he started working as a research assistant at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf as part of the DFG Research Unit FOR2373 “Spoken Morphology”. His research interests encompass the interrelations of morphology, phonology, and phonetics, as well as the psycholinguistics of sound symbolism and gender in language. Most recently, he has been using naive and linear discriminative learning to explore the underlying nature of masculine generic forms in German.

Book cover

Published

November 16, 2022
LaTeX source on GitHub

Print ISSN

2363-5576
Cite as
Schmitz, Dominic. 2022. Production, perception, and comprehension of subphonemic detail: Word-Final /s/ in English. (Studies in Laboratory Phonology 11). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7267830

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Details about the available publication format: PDF

PDF

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-96110-401-7

doi

10.5281/zenodo.7267830

Details about the available publication format: Open review by Arne Lohmann

Open review by Arne Lohmann

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-98554-059-4

Details about the available publication format: Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-98554-059-4