262 pages, NLG 61.50 Reviewed by Andreas Mengel, IMS Stuttgart. In his book Goedemans looks for phonetic and phonological explanations for this fact. From results of a series of speech production experiments Goedemans concludes that the duration variation in onsets of syllables caused by more complex consonant clusters is similar to duration changes of equivalent rhyme structures. Since acoustical measurements of speech data need not necessarily reflect their perception, psycho-acoustical experiments might shed different light on the issue. This finding can by explained by a look at the sonority of the segments of these structures.
Sonority enhances duration perception sensitivity.
In the last experiment it is tested whether the difference in duration perception of onset, nucleus and coda is specific to speech by using non-speech syllable signals whose spectral shape is syllable like. For the onset, nucleus and coda of these stimuli, no difference in duration perception sensitivity is found. Reviewing the data of these languages, alternative descriptions to account for these exceptions are provided. Goedemans concludes that it is doubtful whether these languages can still correctly be labeled as onset sensitive. In the conclusion Goedemans outlines an interpretation of his findings and perspectives of further research.