Abstract
Rhotics and laterals are often described as being separated by F3; however, recent work has described lower F2 as a distinguishing quality of rhotics. The current work examines the perception of liquids (rhotics and laterals) by Mandarin and Hindi listeners. Participants completed a forced-choice identification task on a set of 30 stimuli, manipulated from a natural Malayalam production /aɻa/ to vary systematically in F2 and F3. Listeners chose the consonant they heard from a set of approximants (/r/, /l/, /j/, and /w/ or /ʋ/). The results revealed that liquid identification was mostly confined to the mid F2 range, from 1228 Hz to 1728 Hz. Within that range, stimuli with the lowest F2 and F3 values were predominantly identified as rhotics, while those with the highest F2 and F3 values were identified as laterals. The F3 range of 1885 Hz–2135 Hz was ambiguous between rhotics and laterals. The data suggest that F2, as well as F3, plays a key role in rhotic identification, and suggest overlap in the F3 perceptual space for rhotics and laterals for Mandarin and Hindi listeners. The data suggest a complex relationship between F2 and F3 and liquid perception.
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