Listeners' perception of compensatory shortening

Area of Science:

• Phonetics
• Psychoacoustics
• Speech Perception

Background:

• English speech exhibits compensatory shortening, where stressed syllables shorten before unstressed ones.
• This anticipatory shortening is more pronounced than backward shortening, where unstressed syllables affect preceding stressed ones.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether listeners are sensitive to stressed syllable information obscured by adjacent unstressed syllables.
• To determine if perceived syllable duration is affected by coarticulatory hiding rather than actual temporal reduction.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted to assess listeners' perception of syllable duration.
• Experiments 1A and 1B determined the point of subjective equality for stressed syllables followed by unstressed syllables.
• Experiment 2 examined the point of subjective equality for stressed monosyllables versus disyllables with weak-strong stress patterns.

Main Results:

• Listeners' perception of syllable duration was tested using the point of subjective equality.
• In all experiments, points of subjective equality indicated that listeners perceived stressed syllables in disyllables as shorter than those in monosyllables.
• This suggests listeners integrate coarticulatory information from surrounding unstressed syllables.

Conclusions:

• Perceived syllable duration in English is influenced by coarticulatory hiding, not solely by acoustic shortening.
• Listeners demonstrate sensitivity to acoustic cues within unstressed syllables that relate to adjacent stressed syllables.
• The findings challenge the notion of true compensatory shortening, emphasizing the role of perceptual integration in speech.