Phonological representation affects phonetic perception.

Abstract

This study examines to what extent phonological representations affect word identification in Dutch. Dutch has an underlying contrast in voicing that is neutralized word-finally. Also, vowels are lengthened approximately 20 ms when preceding medial voiced consonants. Vowel length can therefore be a cue to voicing. The present study investigates whether the vowel length cue influences listeners when hearing stimuli with ambiguous vowel duration in an identical, neutralized, consonantal context but where the underlying representation of the consonant differs in voicing. A vowel length continuum ([at] to [a:t]) was made by shortening a long vowel in 12 steps. To this continuum, initial consonants were added to create four phonetic endpoints with opposite underlying voicing patterns: /zat/, /zaad/, /stad/, /staat/. Results of a vowel categorization task showed that, using an identical vowel length continuum, the crossover boundary in the zat–zaad continuum occurs at a significantly shorter vowel length than that in the stad–staat continuum. These results provide evidence that listeners use the underlying phonological representation in the perception and identification of words.