Segmental Alignment of English Syllables with Singleton and Cluster Onsets

Abstract

Recent research has shown fresh evidence that consonant and vowel are synchronised at the syllable onset, as predicted by a number of theoretical models. The finding was made by using a minimal contrast paradigm to determine segment onset in Mandarin CV syllables, which differed from the conventional method of detecting gesture onset with a velocity threshold [1]. It has remained unclear, however, if CV co-onset also occurs between the nucleus vowel and a consonant cluster, as predicted by the articulatory syllable model [2]. This study applied the minimal contrast paradigm to British English in both CV and clusterV (CLV) syllables, and analysed the spectral patterns with signal chopping in conjunction with recurrent neural networks (RNN) with long short-term memory (LSTM) [3]. Results show that vowel onset is synchronised with the onset of the first consonant in a cluster, thus supporting the articulatory syllable model.

Deep learning assessment of syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonants

“…That is, once a coda consonant is resyllabified as the onset of the next syllable, as determined by the deep learning model and DTW analysis, its articulation is overlapped with the vowel of the next syllable, as determined by the binary classifiers. This is consistent with the recent finding that the movements towards the vowel and onset C are synchronised at syllable onset (Liu et al, 2022;Liu & Xu, 2021;Xu et al, 2019), which is denoted by the rime and onset tiers in Fig. 1.…”

“…"flot", the difference between "slit" and "slot" could be detected around the same time as "slot" and "flot", before the frication onset. But we have noted three major differences between Liu and Xu (2021) and the current study.…”

“…The lack of detectable vowel information in /st/ even in normal speech rate may seem to contradict the recent finding that vowel articulation could be detected at the same time as the onset of a consonant cluster (Liu & Xu, 2021). That study found that for a minimal triplet such as "slit" vs. "slot" vs.…”

“…The vowel contrast allows us to examine the amount of coarticulation in the intervening consonant, by assessing the performance of a binary classifier at predicting the second vowel identity using only acoustic data from the annotated consonant interval. Previous studies have used a minimal pair design and showed that when a consonant is coarticulated with the upcoming vowel, acoustic information associated with the vowel can be detected during the consonant (Liu & Xu, 2021, Liu et al, 2022. Liu and Xu (2021) also show that the entire cluster in /clusterV/ syllables in British English is coarticulated with the vowel.…”

“…Previous studies have used a minimal pair design and showed that when a consonant is coarticulated with the upcoming vowel, acoustic information associated with the vowel can be detected during the consonant (Liu & Xu, 2021, Liu et al, 2022. Liu and Xu (2021) also show that the entire cluster in /clusterV/ syllables in British English is coarticulated with the vowel. Thus, a cluster triplet is included in the current study to investigate whether the following vowel is coarticulated from the onset of the consonant cluster.…”