The Interaction of Syllabification and Voicing Perception in American English
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper describes the results of an experiment in which speakers repeatedly produced consonants in prevocalic and postvocalic position at systematically varied repetition rates. The consonants were either 'voiced' (/b/) or 'voiceless' (/p/). These repeated syllables were then excised from the surrounding utterances and played to listeners who were asked to identify the consonant's identity and whether it was postvocalic or prevocalic. Listeners tend to identify pre-vocalic consonants as 'voiceless' and postvocalic consonants as 'voiced'. These misidentifications tend to be magnified at faster speech rates. Considering these results in light of the general allophonic shift in American English, 'voiced' prevocalic stops are actually produced as voiceless and 'voiceless' stops tend to be lenited toward voiced stops, suggests that the current allophonic variation is the result of phonetic pressures applied over a long period of time. Such phonetic pressures are detectable using paradigms which allow one to examine misalignments between production and perception.
Downloads
Article Details
The Indiana University Linguistics Club Working Papers (the "Publisher") and Author(s) agree as follows.
1. Publication and Promotion: In consideration of the Publisher's agreement to publish the Work, Author hereby grants and assigns to Publisher the non-exclusive right to print, publish, reproduce, or distribute the Work throughout the world in all means of expression by any method known or hereafter developed, including electronic format. Author further grants Publisher the right to use Author's name in association with the Work in published form and in advertising and promotional materials.
2. Copyright: Copyright of the Work remains in the Author's name.
3. Prior Publication and Attribution: Author agrees not to publish the Work in print form prior to publication of the Work by the Publisher. Author agrees to notify IULCWP before publishing the Work elsewhere.
4. Author Representations: The Author represents and warrants that the Work: (a) is the Author's original Work and that the Author has full power to enter into this Agreement; (b) does not infringe the copyright or property of another; (c) contains no material that is obscene, libelous, or defamatory. Author shall indemnify and hold Publisher harmless against loss of expenses arising from breach of any such warranties.
5. Licensing and Reuse: Reuse of the published Work will be governed by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ). This lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the Work non-commercially; although new works must acknowledge the original IULCWP publication and be non-commercial, they do not have to be licensed on the same terms.