Talker variability and the use of perceptual cues in Hong Kong Cantonese lingual stop codas

Abstract

Cantonese inaudibly released oral stop codas, whose place cues occur only before constriction and not during or after constriction, appear to be merging among young-adult speakers (Law, Fung, & Bauer, 2001). Prior work (Yip, 2015) revealed substantial articulatory variation among five talkers, ranging from gestural preservation, to coproduction of lingual-lingual sequences, to gestural loss. Coda contrasts were cued by first- and third-formant loci (both lower into /k/ than into /t/) and preceding vowel duration (longer before /t/ than before /k/). In the present study, 18 Cantonese-speaking listeners’ perception of codas produced by talkers in the prior study was tested in an AXB task in which ambiguous coda productions were judged as more similar to each talker’s best coda /t/ or /k/ production, as assessed with ultrasound tongue imaging. Comparisons of listener sensitivity to cues—based on LMER estimates for change in accuracy with respect to relevant acoustic response variables—with their accuracy rates for individual talkers indicate that listeners who were sensitive to particular acoustic cues gained a perceptual advantage for talkers who produced those cues. However, greater articulatory achievement in the stimuli did not correlate with better perception, except for productions by talker T4, who produced gestural loss.