Enhancing secondary voicing cues in words with minimal pairs

Abstract

Lexical competition conditions phonetic variation. For example, words with more phonological neighbors are produced with more hyperarticulated vowels than words with fewer neighbors, and /p,t,k/-initial words with voiced stop minimal pairs have longer VOT. Such effects enhance contrastive features and may be aimed at improving perceptibility of more potentially confusable words. Secondary features may also help distinguish words, as with lengthened vowels that cue coda consonant voicing in English. Our study investigates whether secondary features are enhanced in the production of lexically confusable words, comparing vowel duration in words with final voiced consonants between words with and without minimal pair competitors (e.g., bag with minimal pair back vs. gag with no pair gack). Fifteen American English speakers produced 30 monosyllabic English words with voiced final consonants, half with minimal pair competitors and half without (matched for frequency and neighborhood density). Pre-voiced vowels were found to be longer in minimal pair words than in non-minimal pair words; interactions indicate that the effect is stronger for some vowels. These findings show that it is not just contrastive features, but secondary features too that are subject to enhancement in lexical competition contexts, since they too can contribute to successful lexical perception.