The Perception of Coarticulated Emphaticness

Abstract This study answers the question whether listeners could identify the presence of an emphatic class of consonants (m, ð, s, t, k), even when tape-splicing removed, from the word, the consonant in question. The speech materials consisted of 14 pairs of meaningful Arabic words contrasted in a single consonant; these consonants were removed from both members of each word pair with their CV- or VC-transitions. The resulting truncated word stems along with a carrier phrase were spliced at random onto a tape for presentation to listeners to predict whether the missing consonants were emphatic or nonem-phatic. Results indicate that the presence of emphatic consonants can be detected; and that emphaticness coarticulated in a left-to-right fashion was detectable, as in right-to-left direction.