Patterns in the perception of VC(C)V strings
Terrance M. Nearey, Roel Smits · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2002
A set of 144 /aC(C)a/ stimuli were constructed (inspired by, e.g., B. Repp, Percept. Psychophys. 24, 471–485 (1978)]). Each consisted of: a vocoid (135 ms steady state followed by 50 ms VC closing transitions); a silent portion; and another vocoid (50 ms CV opening transition plus 250 ms steady state). Four different silent periods [80, 120, 190, and 300 ms] were crossed with six closing transition patterns (ranging from b-like to d-like closures) and with six analogous opening transitions. Thirteen listeners classified each stimulus ten times. Polytomous logistic regression showed that singletons, heterorganic clusters, and geminates all have distinct duration weights. Contrary to expectations, results for place were remarkably simple. Weights for closing transitions show labial closures (/b, bd, bb/) to be widely separated from the coronal closures (/d, db, dd/), but are otherwise homogeneous. Weights for opening cues show a similar dichotomy of labial releases /b, db, bb/ versus coronal releases (/d, bd, dd/); here, however, the singleton /b/ differs slightly from the other labials. A related experiment in Dutch will be discussed and results from both experiments will be compared against proposals from the literature and our own models. [Work supported by SSHRC.].