Effects of syllable preparation and syllable frequency in speech production: Further evidence for syllabic units at a post-lexical level

Planning and articulation in incremental word production: Syllable-frequency effects in English.

“…Syllable-frequency effects in production latencies that are independent of word frequency constitute the best existing support for the general notion that syllabic units are stored (see e.g., Cholin et al, 2006;Levelt & Wheeldon, 1994). Moreover, recent studies have suggested that such effects are, as hypothesized, located at the phonetic level, that is, at the level of the hypothesized syllabary (Cholin & Levelt, 2009;Laganaro & Alario, 2006).…”

“…Languages with relatively clear boundaries have been shown to be sensitive to syllable-frequency manipulations (French: Laganaro & Alario, 2006;Spanish: Carreiras & Perea, 2004;Dutch: Cholin et al, 2006;Levelt & Wheeldon, 1994, see also Cholin & Levelt, 2009;German: Aichert & Ziegler, 2004, for accuracy data from a study with neurological patients), and it was concluded that these languages predominantly operate on stored syllable-sized Croot & Rastle, 2004;Cutler et al, 1986), and results from metalinguistic tasks suggest that English speakers may be more sensitive to smaller, subsyllabic units, such as rimes (see e.g., Lee & Goldrick, 2008). Nevertheless, from the current results we can conclude that English, in line with the other tested languages, is also sensitive to syllable-frequency manipulations, suggesting that the underlying phonetic units may be universal, regardless of the syllabic transparency of a language's syllables and its stress properties.…”

Where does the delay in L2 picture naming come from? Psycholinguistic and neurocognitive evidence on second language word production

“…A case in point is the typical vowel epenthesis in the production of certain English consonant clusters by Italian, Spanish, or Japanese L2 speakers of English whose first languages do not allow such clusters. At the phonetic encoding stage where syllables are mapped onto abstract articulatory representations, frequent syllables of the native language may be stored in a mental ''syllabary'' (Levelt, 1989) allowing for a fast retrieval (Cholin et al, 2006;Cholin & Levelt, 2009). Many L2 syllables will be less frequent or even absent in an L2 speaker's first language, so that their phonetic representations have to be assembled rather than looked up in a syllabary.…”

An acoustic study on non-local anticipatory effects of Italian length contrast

“…More importantly, open syllables are much more frequent in the languages of the world than closed syllables (Maddieson, 2013). Considering that frequent syllables are named faster or tend to show shorter duration than low frequent syllables (Levelt and Wheeldon, 1994;Benner et al, 2007;Cholin and Levelt, 2009), the observed word-initial lengthening in geminate words may be a by-product of the lower frequency of closed syllables compared to open syllables.…”

“…Cholin and Levelt, 2009;Levelt, 1999). More importantly, open syllables are much more frequent in the languages of the world than closed syllables (Maddieson, 2013).…”