First language (L1) sound systems can shape second language (L2) perception of non-
native phonological contrasts. This study examines how L1 Mandarin listeners perceive …

Mandarin Chinese has dental, palatal, and retroflex sibilants, but their contrasts before [_i]
are avoided: The palatals appear before [i] while the dentals and retroflexes appear before …

Contrast is a central tenet of phonology. Traditionally, two sounds are said to be in a relation
of contrast in a given language if they can be used to distinguish minimal pairs in the …

German onsets allow a consonant cluster spelt, as in Qualm'fume'. While it has been
traditionally assumed that this orthographic form corresponds to a sequence of a …

This study investigated the phonological representations of vowels in children's native and
non-native lexicons. Two experiments were mispronunciation tasks (ie, a vowel in words …

Research on perceptual epenthesis in Japanese has revealed high back [ɯ] to be the vowel
commonly perceived in illicit consonant sequences. However, loanword studies suggest that …

Sounds are the building blocks of language and contrastive sounds have an especially
prominent spot in phonological theory. Traditionally, contrastive phones are determined by …

Previous research has shown that first language (L1) American English speakers
discriminate the Spanish/ɾ/‐/r/and/ɾ/‐/t/contrasts significantly better than the/ɾ/‐/d/contrast …

ʔayʔaǰuθəm (Comox-Sliammon) is a Central Salish language spoken in British Columbia
with a large fricative inventory. Previous impressionistic descriptions of ʔayʔaǰuθəm have …

Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec is spoken in the community of Teotitlán del Valle, in the Central
Valley of Oaxaca in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Teotitlán Zapotec is one of the Central …