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

Abstract

Several recent studies by Lehiste have reported that changes in fundamental frequency (F0) can serve as a cue to perceived vowel length and, furthermore, the perceived lengthening of the vowel can influence perception of the voicing feature of stop constants in final position. In Experiment I, we replicated Lehiste's basic result for stops in final position. Stimuli of intermediate vowel duration from a “bat-bad” continuum were more often perceived as voiced (“bad”) when F0 was falling than when F0 was monotone. In Experiment II, we found the same effect for fricatives in a synthesized “cease-seize” continuum. In Experiment III, we examined the F0 contours produced by a single talker before post-vocalic stop consonants and fricatives in natural speech for minimal pairs of words differing on voicing. The amount of change of F0 of the vowel was no greater before than voiced than voiceless consonants though rate of change was greater before voiceless consonants due to the shorter vowel duration. Our results indicate that, although F0 contour is capable of functioning as a cue to voicing of a postvocalic consonant in perception, its generality as a perceptual cue to voicing may be extremely limited given that the distinction is not reliably made in speech production as well. [Supported by NIMH and NINCDS.]