A ‘Pause-Break’ Task For Eliciting Syllable Boundary Judgments from Literate and Illiterate Speakers: Preliminary Results for Five Diverse Languages

Bruce L. Derwing

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Phonetics and Phonology Research Reading and Literacy Development Language Development and Disorders

Abstract

A new oral ‘pause-break’ task is described for eliciting judgments about syllable boundaries from speakers of languages of diverse types who have potentially limited educational and/or literacy levels. Results are presented from five different languages, including English. The English results replicate the findings from previous studies using other techniques, while the following generalizations follow from the application of the technique to Arabic, Blackfoot, Korean, and Swiss German: There is (1) a widespread tendency to treat single intervocalic consonants as syllable onsets and (2) an equally broad tendency to break between the two members of intervocalic CC clusters. The treatment of intervocalic geminates or long consonants (as in Arabic and Blackfoot) seems to vary as a function of educational level: In general, the better educated, literate speakers interpret them as disegments and treat them as in (2) above, while the semiliterate subjects often interpret them as single segments and treat them as in (1). The technique itself seems to have proved itself as suitable for use with speakers of a wide range of educational levels and languages.

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References

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2001A Language Without a Rhyme: Syllable Structure Experiments in Korean 2008The Phonetic Context of American English Flapping: Quantitative Evidence 2013Syllabification of American English: Evidence from a Large-scale Experiment. Part I∗2010Reconstructing Indo-European Syllabification.

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