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Cross-language research on consonant cluster production has shown that consonant clusters in different languages are produced with different degrees of articulatory timing lags. The present study examines perceptual sensitivity to these cross-linguistic timing differences in consonant clusters. Native German listeners were tested on an AXB similarity judgment test using stimuli including consonant clusters produced by German and Georgian speakers. (German consonant clusters are produced with relatively shorter lag between two consonants than Georgian ones.) Stimuli were /bla, gla, gna/ syllables recorded along with articulatory (EMA) data. Short lag German tokens and long lag Georgian tokens were selected as A and B, with Xs of varying degrees of lag chosen from either Georgian or German recordings. Results showed that German listeners are sensitive to the cross-linguistic differences in articulatory timing lag: when the timing lag of X was closer to A, participants were more likely to choose A. Moreover, listeners’ sensitivity was influenced by the types of clusters: listeners were more sensitive in /bla/ than they were in /gla/ and in /gna/. The effects on the similarity judgment of different measures of articulatory lag, of vocalic releases produced within clusters, and of other sub-phonemic details were investigated. Overall, the results show that the lag differences are salient to German listeners while German and Georgian clusters can differ in a number of respects.

This study investigates the role of phonology in spontaneous imitation in Seoul Korean speakers' imitation of aspirated stops by comparing the primary and non-primary cues. Seoul Korean aspirated stops are differentiated from stops of other phonation types by at least two distinct acoustic properties, stop VOT and f0 of the post-stop vowel, with the latter being the primary cue. In the imitation experiment, Seoul Korean speakers heard and shadowed model speech that contained aspirated stops manipulated by either raising post-stop f0 or lengthening VOT. Their realization of these properties in /tʰ/, /t/, and /t*/ productions were compared before, during, and after exposure. Although both high f0 and long VOT induced imitative changes in post-shadowing productions, the results revealed that exposure to an enhanced non-primary cue (long VOT) also influences the production of the primary cue for aspirated stops (post-stop f0). However, an enhanced primary cue (high f0) does not have similar effects on the non-primary cue. These results provide evidence that spontaneous imitation is not strictly tied to individual phonetic properties but it is rather phonological in that abstract categories are involved in the process of imitation.Kwon: The role of native phonology in spontaneous imitation Art. 10, page 2 of 24 in direct opposition to each other, but they focus on different aspects of spontaneous imitation. While the exemplar account claims that the nature of the memory system gives rise to observed patterns of imitation with regard to the effects of lexical frequency, recency, and amount of exposure, the direct realist account claims that the intrinsic link between speech perception and production at the articulatory level explains the rapid and direct imitation.Many researchers have investigated the role of various social factors in spontaneous imitation, and reported that non-grammatical or social factors, such as gender, conversational role, or attractiveness of the model speaker influence both the likelihood of imitation (i.e., whether the model speech is imitated in the subsequent productions or not) and the imitation fidelity (i.e., how similar the subsequent production becomes to the model speech) (e.g., Pardo, 2006;Babel, 2012;Babel, McGuire, Walters, & Nicholls, 2014). While these social aspects of imitation are an intriguing topic that has been intensively explored, the present study focuses on the role of phonology in imitation and asks the following question: When speakers converge to a model speaker, that is, when the imitation is triggered, how does the imitators' phonological knowledge influence the pattern of imitation (i.e., how the model is imitated), as well as the likelihood and the degree of imitation?Previous research on the role of phonology in spontaneous imitation have suggested that changes in certain phonetic properties are not imitated when they are detrimental to phonological contrast or phonologically irrelevant. For example, Nielsen (2011) reports that English speakers imitate lengthene...

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