Clear speech in Tashlhiyt Berber

What is it about?

The current study investigates the role of a listener-oriented speaking style on the perceptual enhancement of rarer phonological contrasts. It examines the perception of word-initial singleton, geminate, and complex onsets in Tashlhiyt Berber across clear and casual speaking styles by native and naive listeners.

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Why is it important?

Clear speech boosts the discriminability of pairs containing singleton-initial words for both native and naive listeners, but only native listeners performed better in discriminating between initial singleton-geminate contrasts in clear speech. Clear speech did not improve perception for lexical contrasts containing a non-rising-sonority consonant cluster for either listener group