Consonants

The Consonants analysis finds target consonants in six syllabic contexts and compares each one with its aligned production on the IPA Actual tier. It reports counts of correct productions, substitutions, deletions, and, for clusters, epenthesis.

Use this analysis to examine a participant's consonant inventory and production accuracy by target, syllable position, and singleton or cluster context.

Before you begin

Check the word boundaries, syllabification, and phone alignment of the IPA Target and IPA Actual tiers. The analysis identifies contexts from the target syllabification and classifies each phone from the target-to-actual alignment.

Assign a speaker to each record so that its results are included in the appropriate participant section.

Parameters

The analysis opens at the Parameters step. Its principal controls are:

Table 1. Consonants parameters
Parameter	Default	Effect
Report Title	Consonants	Sets the title of the generated report.
Combine results for all selected participants	Off	Combines the selected participants into one participant section instead of reporting each participant separately.
Cluster types	All six selected	Selects the singleton and cluster contexts to search. A report branch is omitted when none of its selected searches returns a result.
Diacritic Options	Compare diacritics	Controls whether all or selected diacritics are ignored when a target and actual phone are classified as correct or substituted.
Search by	Word; Then by syllable off; Include positional information off	Sets the query domain and optional result grouping. The analysis still calculates the consonant's syllable-constituent position for its accuracy tables.
Aligned Phones	Empty IPA Target and IPA Actual Phonex matchers	Optionally restricts the aligned productions included in the result.

The remaining expandable controls are the standard tier, word, syllable, additional-tier-data, and participant filters. See Common Query Parameters and Aligned Phones.

Consonant contexts

All six contexts are selected by default:

Singleton Onsets — a single onset consonant, including a standalone onset.
Singleton Codas — a single medial or final coda consonant.
Singleton OEHS — a single onset of an empty-headed syllable.
Syllable-initial Clusters (including appendices) — two or more consonants drawn from left appendices, onsets, or OEHSs.
Syllable-final Clusters (including appendices) — two or more consonants drawn from codas or right appendices.
Heterosyllabic clusters — one or more consonants on each side of a syllable boundary.

The result listing identifies these searches as Singleton Onset, Singleton Coda, Singleton OEHS, Syllable-initial Cluster, Syllable-final Cluster, or Heterosyllabic Cluster in its Type column.

How accuracy is scored

For each aligned position, the analysis adds one of the following outcomes:

Accurate — the target and actual phones match under the selected diacritic options.
Substitutions — both sides contain a phone, but they do not match.
Deletions — the target phone is aligned with no actual phone.
Epenthesis — an actual phone is aligned with no target phone. This outcome is included for cluster results, but not for singleton results.

The Position value combines the syllable-constituent code with the phone's one-based position in that constituent. For example, O1 is the first onset phone and C2 is the second coda phone. The analysis also uses L and R for left and right appendices and E for an OEHS. An epenthetic position ends in +.

Accuracy tables end with a totals row and a percentage row. Percentages for accurate, substituted, deleted, and epenthetic outcomes are calculated against Count.

Report output

The report begins with Readme and Parameters, followed by one section for each selected participant. Selecting Combine results for all selected participants produces one combined section instead.

Table 2. Consonants report sections
Section or table	Contents
Global Accuracy	Combines singleton and cluster phone accuracy for the participant. It is followed by syllable-initial and syllable-final accuracy tables and appears only when both singleton and cluster results are present.
Singletons	Contains Singleton Accuracy, Syllable-initial Accuracy, and Syllable-final Accuracy. Each distinct target consonant then has an Accuracy table and a token Listing.
Clusters	Contains Cluster Accuracy, Syllable-initial Accuracy, and Syllable-final Accuracy. When insertions are present, it also contains an Epenthesis table. Each distinct target cluster then has an Accuracy table and a token Listing.
Listing	At the report root, lists all returned tokens across selected participants and contexts. It includes session, speaker, record, target and actual IPA, context type, and the token-level outcome counts. Selecting a result in the report opens its source record.

Note:

Sections with no matching tokens are omitted. For example, a data set containing only singleton consonants has no Clusters or Global Accuracy section.