The voicing contrast in Spanish

Abstract

An investigation of word-initial voiced and voiceless stop consonants obtained from Venezualan, Peruvian and Guatamalan Spanish dialect groups showed no significant cross-dialect differences in the distributions of voice onset time (VOT) values. In a perceptual study using a synthetic voicing series, VOT was shown to provide a sufficient cue for initial voicing for Peruvian Spanish monolinguals. However, the results of another study employing natural-speech material suggest that acoustic properties other than VOT may supply additional voicing cues to the Spanish listener. An acoustic feature termed presence versus absence of an abrupt consonant onset is described. This feature is claimed to be invariant across several phonetic environments in Spanish. It is suggested that this feature may be used by the Spanish listener in making a perceptual distinction between voiced and voiceless stop consonants in multiple environments.