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Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 6:4 (2015) ► pp.615–636

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Consonant clusters and intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca in Japan

Phonological modifications to restore intelligibility in ELF

Published online: 21 December 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.6.4.07one
This is a qualitative study of the relationship between consonant cluster articulation and intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca interactions in Japan (Jenkins 2000; Matsumoto 2011). Some research has claimed that the full articulation of consonant clusters in lexeme-initial and lexeme-medial position is critical to the maintenance of intelligibility (Jenkins 2000, 2002, 2007; Walker 2010; Deterding 2013). Using conversation analytic methodology to examine a corpus of repair sequences in interactions among English as a Lingua Franca speakers at a Japanese university, this study claims that consonant elision in consonant clusters in lexeme-initial, lexeme-medial, and lexeme-final position can attenuate intelligibility, and that the insertion of an elided consonant into a word that was oriented to as unintelligible can help restore intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca.
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2025. Vowel Length and Intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca. Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech 6:3 ► pp. 246 ff. DOI logo
Karimi, Mohammad N. & Parisa Ashkani
2025. Gains in Pronunciation of Lexeme‐Initial Biconsonantal Clusters Among Second Language Learners: An Individual Differences–Treatment Interaction Design. Language Learning DOI logo
Galante, Angelica & Enrica Piccardo
2022. Teaching pronunciation: toward intelligibility and comprehensibility. ELT Journal 76:3 ► pp. 375 ff. DOI logo
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O’Neal, George
2015. Segmental repair and interactional intelligibility: The relationship between consonant deletion, consonant insertion, and pronunciation intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca in Japan. Journal of Pragmatics 85 ► pp. 122 ff. DOI logo
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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