Two types of phonological variation in Dutch, resulting from optional rules, are schwa epenthesis and schwa deletion. In a lexical decision experiment it was investigated whether the phonological variants were processed similarly to the standard forms. It was found that the two types of variation patterned differently. Words with schwa epenthesis were processed faster and more accurately than the standard forms, whereas words with schwa deletion led to less fast and less accurate responses. The results are discussed in relation to the role of consonant-vowel alternations in speech processing and the perceptual integrity of onset clusters.
Cite as: Kuijpers, C., Donselaar, W.v., Cutler, A. (1996) Phonological variation: epenthesis and deletion of schwa in Dutch. Proc. 4th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1996), 149-152, doi: 10.21437/ICSLP.1996-38
@inproceedings{kuijpers96_icslp,
author={Cecile Kuijpers and Wilma van Donselaar and Anne Cutler},
title={{Phonological variation: epenthesis and deletion of schwa in Dutch}},
year=1996,
booktitle={Proc. 4th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1996)},
pages={149--152},
doi={10.21437/ICSLP.1996-38}
}