Fundamental frequency as a cue to postvocalic consonantal voicing: Some data from speech perception and production

Abstract

Several recent studies by Lehiste have reported that changes in fundamental frequency (FO) can serve as a cue to perceived vowel length and, furthermore, that the perceived lengthening of the vowel can influence perception of the voicing feature of stop consonants in syllable-final position. In Experiment 1, we replicated Lehiste's basic results for stop consonants in final position. Experiment 2 extended these results to postvocalic fricatives. The final consonant in syllables of intermediate vowel duration was more often perceived as voiced when FO was falling than when FO was monotone. In Experiment 3, we examined the FO contours produced by eight talkers before postvocalic stop consonants and fricatives in natural speech for minimal pairs of words differing in voicing. The amount of change of FO over the vowel was no greater before voiced than voiceless consonants, suggesting that the earlier perceptual effects cannot be explained by appealing to regularities observed in the production of FO contours in vowels preceding postvocalic consonants.Recently, several investigators have observed that perceived vowel duration can be influenced by the fundamental frequency (FO) contour of the vowel (e.g., Lehiste, 1976; Pisoni, Note 1; Wang, Lehiste, Chang, & Darnovsky, Note 2). In particular, vowels with a changing FO were found to be perceived as longer than vowels with a monotone PO. The direction of change seems to have little influence on this effectvowels with rising FOs and vowels with falling FOs were both perceived as longer than vowels with level FOs (Lehiste, 1976).Variations in vowel duration are known to have at least two important effects on phoneme identification. First, vowel duration systematically influences the identification of the vowel itself (e.g., Stevens, 1959). Two vowels with identical formant frequencies but different durations are frequently identified as different vowels. This effect is particularly strong for the IE.! (short vowel)-Iael (long vowel) distinction. Second, vowel duration has been shown to affect the perception of voicing of a following consonant (e.g., Denes, 1954). A consonant following a long vowel is more likely to be perceived as voiced This paper is a substantially expanded version of a paper delivered by the first author at the 97th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, June 12·17, 1979, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The research reported here was supported by NIMH Research Grant MH-24027 to Indiana University. Requests for reprints should be sent to either Thomas M. Gruenenfelder, who is now at Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey 07133, or David B. Pisoni, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405.than an acoustically identical consonant following the same vowel of shorter duration.Vowel duration, then, can serve as a phonemic cue. Because the FO contour affects perceived vowel duration, it seems reasonable to suppose that the FO contour over a syllable can also serve as a phonemic cue. In particular, placing a contour on the FO ...

Structure and duration of vowels together specify fricative voicing

“…This research has shown that steadystate vowel duration, or perhaps the ratio of fricative-tovowel duration, is a strong cue for the voicing contrast in word-final fricatives (Denes, 1955;Derr and Massaro, 1980;Gruenenfelder and Pisoni, 1980). The duration of the steadystate vowel, or of the nasal resonance in final nasal-stop clusters, also provides su•cient voicing cues for final stops (Raphael, 1972; Raphael et al, 1975;Raphael et al, 1980).…”

Influence of fundamental frequency on stop-consonant voicing perception: A case of learned covariation or auditory enhancement?

“…For higher f 0's, listeners more often report hearing voiceless consonants ͑i.e., ͓pa͔͒. This finding is extremely robust, and has been reported across multiple phonetic contexts, using a variety of measures ͑e.g., Chistovich, 1969;Haggard et al, 1970;Fujimura, 1971;Cohen, 1976, 1977;Derr and Massaro, 1980;Gruenenfelder and Pisoni, 1980;Haggard et al, 1981;Kohler, 1985;Kohler and van Dommelen, 1986;Whalen et al, 1993;Castleman and Diehl, 1996͒. Perception of voiced versus voiceless consonants thus follows the regularities of speech production. Much has been made of this correspondence and a good deal of speculation has surrounded the question of why f 0 and VOT covary in speech production ͑e.g., Kingston and Diehl, 1994͒.…”

The Influence of Pre- and Postplosive Fundamental Frequency on /t/–/d/ Perception in German

“…Following a differ ent line of argumentation, Kohler [1985] proposes that the perceptual influence of F0 reflects a production-perception relation ship. However, appropriate production data on preplosive F0 are either extremely scarce [for two speakers in Kohler, 1982] or inconsistent [Gruenenfelder and Pisoni, 1980], This might be due to the fact that microprosodic effects in preconsonantal vowels, if they exist at all, are easily over ridden by macroprosodic variations of the global sentence contour, but we could pur sue this question further by looking for a possibility of investigating the perceptual influence of F0 variations while avoiding the fortis/lenis test paradigm. A viable proposal would be to focus on a phonologically short versus long German vowel be fore a consonant which is not specified as fortis/lenis (e.g.…”

“…This effect might be ex plained by hypothesizing a subjectively longer vowel duration associated with a stronger F0 movement. The longer duration would, in turn, bias the phoneme judge ments towards more lenis percepts [Lehiste, 1976;Lehiste and Shockey, 1980;Gruenenfelder and Pisoni, 1980]. Following a differ ent line of argumentation, Kohler [1985] proposes that the perceptual influence of F0 reflects a production-perception relation ship.…”

“…1). Studies by Gruenenfelder and Pisoni [1980] and Lehiste and Shockey [1980] have already shown that a dynamic versus flat F0 pattern during a vowel biases the perception of a following obstruent towards lenis in isolated English words. For German, Kohler [1985] found a level + falling contour in sentence-em bedded test words to elicit more lenis judge ments than a level one.…”