Processing of Phonemic Consonant Length: Semantic and Fragment Priming Evidence from Bengali

Mismatch negativity (MMN) as an index of asymmetric processing of consonant duration in fake Mandarin geminates

Unlike languages where consonant duration is used contrastively to distinguish word meanings, long consonants in Mandarin Chinese only occur across morpheme boundaries as a result of concatenation and are referred to as fake geminates. To investigate whether Mandarin speakers employ duration contrast to differentiate fake Mandarin geminates and corresponding singletons as well as the underlying pattern of the processing, two auditory oddball tasks were carried out to measure the component of MMN, an index of the automatic detection of deviant stimulus. Mandarin pseudoword pairs which differ only in the duration of the medial consonant ([an1 an1] ∼ [an1 nan1] vs. [an2 an2] ∼ [an2 nan2]) were used as stimuli. An asymmetric pattern of brain activation was observed where the singleton deviant in the context of geminate words elicited higher MMNs than in the reversed condition. These findings are in line with earlier research suggesting that the singleton is unspecified for a moraic representation, while the geminate is specified. Mandarin speakers can employ duration contrast to distinguish fake geminates and corresponding singletons; furthermore, the processing of fake concatenated geminates in contrast to singletons is similar to that of real geminates and corresponding singletons.

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Mandarin speakers use durational cues to differentiate fake geminate/singleton contrast.

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The contrast is represented asymmetrically with a geminate specified for its length with a mora while a singleton is not.

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Asymmetric processing pattern between fake geminate/singleton contrast was found for word pairs with different tones.

Durational properties of Polish geminate consonants

Polish is a geminating language with true lexical geminates that form minimal pairs with their singleton counterparts. What is more, Polish, unlike many other geminating languages, allows both single-articulated and rearticulated geminate realisations. In this study, durational properties of Polish geminates together with preceding and following vowels were analysed to compare Polish to other geminating languages. Fifty-four native speakers of Polish were recorded producing geminates and singletons in controlled carrier sentences during a reading task. The results revealed that the main durational cue to the geminate/singleton contrast was consonant duration with a geminate-to-singleton ratio (G/S) of 2.48. Vowels preceding or following geminates and singletons did not differ significantly in duration. Rearticulated geminates occurred 22% of the time and were not significantly longer or shorter than single-articulated geminates. The current results locate Polish among the languages with a medium-to-high G/S ratio and without vowel duration as a cue to a geminate/singleton contrast. Finally, the results allow for the discussion of the behaviour of Polish geminates relative to other languages as well as to indicate directions for further research into the phenomenon of geminate rearticulation.