Phonological chunking in German and English: Segment, juncture, and boundary

Abstract

Linguistic knowledge implies the ability to identify and manipulate phonological segments of various sizes. Such "chunks" are often, although not always, demarcated by phonetic clues to phonological organization. The American Structuralists in the 1930's-1950's posited a demarcative phoneme called "juncture," which raised questions about the legitimacy of phonological analyses which rely on grammatical information about the language. Data from language games, diachronic resegmentation, and phonological reduction all show that a competent speaker can "chunk" phonological material in a variety of ways. The field linguist, the armchair analyst, and the ordinary listener are all playing the same segmentation game, listening for phonetic clues to linguistic structure.