A series of listening tests with brief synthetic consonant–vowel syllables was carried out to determine whether the initial part of a syllable can provide cues to place of articulation for voiced stop consonants independent of the remainder of the syllable. The data show that stimuli as short as 10–20 ms sampled from the onset of a consonant–vowel syllable, can be reliably identified for consonantal place of articulation, whether the second and higher formants contain moving or straight transitions and whether or not an initial burst is present. In most instances, these brief stimuli also contain sufficient information for vowel indentification. Stimulus continua in which formant transitions ranged from values appropriate to [b], [d], [g] in various vowel environments, and in which stimulus durations were 20 and 46 ms, yielded categorical labeling functions with a few exceptions. These results are consistent with a theory of speech perception in which consonant place of articulation is cued by invariant properties derived from the spectrum sampled in a 10–20 ms time window adjacent to consonantal onset or offset.
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February 1980
February 01 1980
Perceptual invariance and onset spectra for stop consonants in different vowel environments
Sheila E. Blumstein;
Sheila E. Blumstein
Department of Linguistics, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912
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Kenneth N. Stevens
Kenneth N. Stevens
Research Laboratory of Electronics and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 67, 648–662 (1980)
Citation
Sheila E. Blumstein, Kenneth N. Stevens; Perceptual invariance and onset spectra for stop consonants in different vowel environments. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 February 1980; 67 (2): 648–662. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.383890
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