Abstract
The results are presented of an experimental investigation of a hypothesized perceptual cue in the determination of the voicing status of postvocalic English stop consonants. The hypothesis tested—put forward in Parker (1974)—was that the most important cue to the voicing status of such consonants is the manner of termination of the preceding vowel. No empirical support for Parker’s hypothesis was found. Durational differences still seem to be the most significant cue to this distinction. It was further found that replacing the vowels from experimental tokens /kɔb/, /kɔd/ and /kɔg/ with those from /kɔp/, /kɔt/ and /kɔk/ inhibited subjects’ tendency to give voiced responses. Voiced responses tended to be enhanced when vowels from /kɔp/, /kɔt/ and /kɔk/ were replaced by the vowels from /kɔb/, /kɔd/ and /kɔg/. An attempt is made to account for these effects in terms of physiological constraints on laryngeal action during the vowel.
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