Identification of Hindi Stop Consonants in Syllable-Final Position

Abstract

An experiment using CVC syllables was performed to study the relative importance of various acoustic cues for the identification of Hindi stop consonants in syllable-final position. The results indicate that the VC transition is not sufficient for place and voicing identification and that the voiced release burst of a voiced stop is a stronger perceptual cue than the voiceless release burst of a voiceless stop. All three cues (vowel formant transition, closure/voice bar, and release burst) are needed for the maximal recognition of unaspirated stops whereas, in the case of their aspirated counterparts, the removal of the VC transition from stimuli containing all three cues—vowel transition, closure/voice bar, and aspiration noise—causes an enhancement in correct scores due to an increase in the identifiability of the aspiration feature, the place scores remaining unaltered. It is also found that aspiration noise (including release burst) is a sufficient cue for the place identification of the aspirates. Voicing identification of voiced stops requires the presence of the occlusion interval filled with glottal pulsations.