1887
Volume 27, Issue 2
  • ISSN 0929-0907
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9943
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Abstract

Abstract

This experimental study sets out to determine whether people detect click sounds in American English. Recent research has documented the use of non-phonemic clicks in a variety of languages to fulfill a range of functions such as sequence management or signaling searches and different types of attitudinal stance. While these clicks are acoustically salient and have been reported to occur with a frequency of up to 14 per minute in British English, they have not been widely investigated until relatively recently. For this experiment, we designed video stimuli consisting of A and B pairs of approximately 10 seconds of speech, one with a click and the other with the click edited out. We gave 118 participants a questionnaire and asked if they could detect a difference between the pairs of videos. The results indicate that the majority of participants, between 79% and 86%, do not detect click sounds.

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/content/journals/10.1075/pc.20009.vig
2021-10-06
2025-02-15
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): clicks; detection; experimental study; paralinguistics
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