The Perception of Novel Consonant Clusters: A Comparison of Salience and Sonority

Background/Objectives: In human language, speech sound units, referred to as segments, are rigidly ordered. Certain orderings are typologically common, while others are typologically rare. This pattern has led linguists to posit a scalar segment-intrinsic feature, referred to as "sonority," and a hierarchy relating to ordering referred to as the "sonority hierarchy." In generative phonology, it has been proposed that the sonority hierarchy is present in the innate underlying grammar as the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) and variations thereof. In grammar-based approaches it is common for speech sounds to be abstractly classified based on manner with obstruents being the least sonorous and vowels being most sonorous and with three levels of adherence to the SSP: 1 strict adherence with a sonority rise as in the sequence /pla/, 2 slight adherence/slight violation with a sonority plateau as in /pta/ or /mna/, and 3 violation with a sonority fall before the vowel as in /lpa/. Some linguists have proposed that segmental ordering is the result of generalized pressures relating to speech perception, cognitive processing, and gestural coordination, and therefore not part of the underlying grammar. This study examines the relative contribution of perceptual salience (defined as loudness and segmental recoverability) to segmental ordering. Methods: We used eye-tracking in the visual world paradigm to track real-time processing of perception of novel consonant clusters. We compared whether salience or sonority had a stronger association with how participants simplify clusters in perception, where salience and sonority had different predictions. Results: We found that participants looked more towards salience-predicted competitors than sonority-predicted ones prior to focusing on the target. Conclusions: This finding is in line with theories based on acoustic and auditory salience being the strongest predictors of perceptual ease.