Perception of incompletely neutralized voicing cues in word-final obstruents: The role of differences in production context

Abstract

Experimental data on final devoicing in languages such as German and Russian usually show that speakers produce incompletely neutralized acoustic differences between words ending in phonologically voiced versus voiceless obstruents (e.g., /kod/ 'code' vs. /kot/ 'cat' in Russian) and that listeners can use these differences to identify the underlying specification of final consonants at an above-chance level. The current study examines how the seemingly successful perceptual identification of voicing varies across stimulus items recorded in reading vs. non-reading procedures and with and without full minimal pairs present in the experimental list. Results of a series of identification tasks reveal that Russian listeners' identification responses are more in line with underlying voicing for the stimuli recorded during word-reading and with minimal pairs included among the experimental items. This shows that voicing judgments are strongly influenced by the acoustic differences produced when speakers encounter orthographic forms or lexical competition. At the same time, perceptual neutralization is also not complete for the items recorded without such exposure, which indicates that listeners' ability to recover underlying voicing is not limited to the production contexts involving written forms or minimal pairs.

Incomplete neutralisation as a result of place assimilation of palatalised sibilants at word boundaries in Modern Standard Russian

“…Наконец, в работах В. Харламова [23,24] также сделан вывод о том, что в речи носителей СРЛЯ неполная ней-трализация при оглушении достигается за счет темпоральных характеристик согласных, а не гласных; кроме того, было описано влияние орфографии, на-личия / отсутствия минимальных пар и методологических факторов на про-изношение и восприятие глухих и оглушенных согласных носителями СРЛЯ.…”

Vowel nasalisation in Scottish Gaelic: No evidence for incomplete neutralisation in initial mutation

“…As well as for German (Mitleb 1981;Fourakis and Iverson 1984;Charles-Luce 1985;Port and O'Dell 1985;Port and Crawford 1989;Piroth and Janker 2004), acoustic evidence of incomplete neutralisation in final devoicing has been reported for Catalan (Dinnsen and Charles-Luce 1984;Charles-Luce and Dinnsen 1987), Polish (Slowiaczek and Dinnsen 1985;Tieszen 1997), Russian (Barry 1988;Dmitrieva et al 2010;Kulikov 2012;Kharlamov 2012Kharlamov , 2014Shrager 2012), Afrikaans (van Rooy et al 2003;Kaplan 2017) and Dutch (Warner et al 2004). It has also been found that listeners perform at above-chance level when attempting to discriminate between minimal pairs that differ only in underlying voicing in German (Port et al 1984;Port and O'Dell 1985;Port and Crawford 1989), Polish (Slowiaczek and Szymanska 1989), Afrikaans (van Rooy et al 2003) and Russian (Matsui 2011;Kharlamov 2012Kharlamov , 2015. Besides final devoicing, incomplete neutralisation has also been reported in connection with various other phenomena, such as American English t/d-flapping (Fisher and Hirsh 1976;Fox and Terbeek 1977;Zue and Laferriere 1979;Patterson and Connine 2001;Herd et al 2010;Braver 2011Braver , 2013Braver , 2014 and Russian unstressed vowel reduction (Padgett and Tabain 2005;Kaplan 2017).…”