Abstract
It is known that the perceived voicing of the medial stop in words like rabid and rapid can be controlled by changing the duration of the stop closure. We found [R. Port, J. Acous. Soc. Am. 59, S41–S42(A) (1976)] that increasing the tempo of a preceding carrier sentence shortened the boundary between rabid and rapid along a continuum of silent closure durations, but by far less than the percent decrease in sentence duration. We hypothesized that timing in unaltered portions of the test word reduced the effect of the carrier tempo. This experiment directly compares the effect on this boundary of the tempo of a surrounding carrier when the tempo of the test word itself is changed. A speaker recorded “I'm trying to say rabid to you” at both fast and slow tempos. Rabid was excised from each, and two continua of silent /b/ closures were prepared (from 50 to 200 ms) and embedded in both original sentences. Listeners identified the test words as either rabid or rapid. Results indicate (1) tempo within the test word had a stronger effect on the boundary than tempo in the carrier, and (2) for a given tempo of carrier, the ratio of the boundary value of closure duration to the duration of the rab syllable was nearly constant for both rab durations.
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