The Audibility of / + /

Extract

The recent article in The Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association by Professors Robinson, Theall, and Wevers represents a pleasant and fruitful discussion of issues on which it is important to increase communication and understanding. I believe that it may also increase understanding if I point out that there was an unfortunate error in Introduction to Linguistic Structures, and that on the basis of my own statements I am quite properly taken to task for presenting ‘plus juncture’ as an inaudible “ghost phoneme”.

On p. 12 of their article, Messrs. Robinson, Theall, and Wevers quote my statement (ILS p. 26 fn. 7) “A / + / is often so short as to be below the duration (five centiseconds) which the human ear can hear. Under these circumstances what we actually do hear is the effect on the surrounding sounds.”