Speech segments are lengthened at the onsets and offsets of linguistic constituents. Final-syllable vowel lengthening is proposed to be a language-universal cue to word segmentation, but cross-linguistic investigations of the perception of initial consonant lengthening are lacking. We compared the use of word-initial consonant lengthening and word-final vowel lengthening by native speakers of English, Hungarian and Italian, using an artificial language learning task and varying vowel and consonant durations between subjects within each language group. Word-final vowel lengthening was only exploited for segmentation by English speakers; we interpret its non-universality as potentially due, at least in part, to language-specific functional loads on vowel duration, used for indicating lexical stress in Italian and vowel identity in Hungarian. By contrast, all three language groups used word-initial consonant lengthening to locate word boundaries, but did not benefit from lengthening of vowels in word-initial syllables. If domain-initial consonant timing effects are universal, it may be because they promote two related but separable processing requirements for the listener: (a) word segmentation, boosted by lengthening across the boundary; (b) lexical access, boosted by articulatory strengthening and lengthening of word onsets.

语音段在语言成分的开始和偏移处被加长。最终音节元音加长被认为是语言普遍的分词提示，但是缺乏对初始辅音加长的感知的跨语言研究。我们比较了英语，匈牙利语和意大利语为母语的人对词首辅音加长和词尾元音加长的使用，方法是使用人工语言学习任务，并且每个语言组中对象之间的元音和辅音持续时间不同。词尾元音加长仅被英语使用者用来进行细分；我们将其非通用性解释为，至少部分原因是由于特定于语言的元音持续时间功能负荷，用于指示意大利语中的词法重音和匈牙利语中的元音身份。相比之下，这三个语言组都使用词首辅音加长来定位词的边界，但没有受益于词首音节中元音的加长。如果域初始辅音时序效应是普遍的，则可能是因为它们促进了听众的两个相关但可分离的处理要求：（a）分段，通过延长边界来增强；（b）通过单词发音的发音强化和加长来促进词汇访问。通过延长边界来加强；（b）通过单词发音的发音强化和加长来促进词汇访问。通过延长边界来加强；（b）通过单词发音的发音强化和加长来促进词汇访问。