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Updated: Sep 20, 2026

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
Phrase-final lengthening modulates listeners' perception of vowel duration as a cue to coda stop voicing
1Department of Linguistics, University of California Los Angeles, 3125 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, California 90095-1543, USAjsteffman@ucla.edu.
Abstract:
The present study addresses how listeners may be sensitive to temporal regularities associated with prosody in their perception of durational segmental cues. Specifically, this study tests whether expectations about phrase-final lengthening mediate listeners' categorization of a "coat"∼"code" vowel duration continuum, where vowel duration cues stop voicing. Prosodic position of the target was manipulated such that it was either medial, or final in a carrier phrase. Results indicate that this prosodic manipulation influences categorization such that listeners effectively require longer vowel duration for a "code" response when the target is phrase-final, suggesting that prosodic patterns can modulate listeners' processing of temporal cues.
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