Place and manner asymmetries in perception of epenthetic stops

The phonological markedness of labials and dorsals being more marked than coronals is often explained as a consequence of differences in degree of perceptual salience. To investigate whether or not such place markedness plays a role when segments are phonetically variable, a perceptual experiment was conducted with English epenthetic stops between a sonorant and a fricative, as in ‘false’ [fɔl^ts] or ‘strength’ [stɹɛŋ^kθ]. Listeners heard more epenthetic stops after [m] than after [n] and [ŋ], implying that not only coronals but dorsals are unmarked. Also, they heard more epenthetic stops after a nasal than a lateral, which suggests that the specification of [±continuant] for the sonorant is important to identify the place of the epenthetic stop heard after it.