The role of word structure in segmental serial ordering.

To test the hypothesis that similarity in position within the syllable provides an adequate description of the position constraints on segmental interaction errors in American English, five error elicitation experiments were carried out using sets of tongue-twisters based on pairs of confusable target consonants. Interaction errors increased when the two target segments shared position in the word onset, or before a stressed vowel, suggesting that these factors play an active role in the normal phonological encoding process.