The vowel-dependence of gross spectral cues to place of articulation of stop consonants in CV syllables

Abstract

It has been argued by Stevens and Blumstein that the acoustic cues of stop consonant place of articulation residing in the gross spectrum, sampled at the release burst onset, are invariant across different vowel contexts. It is shown in this paper that the conclusion of in variance does not follow from the experimental findings of the proponents of the theory of acoustic invariance, and the present results indicate that the vowel exerts a reliable influence on the stop–vowel waveform from the very beginning in terms of gross spectral properties. Also, the consonant influence is seen to be strong throughout the 45 ms interval from the beginning of the CV syllable. Implications of these coarticulatory effects to theories of speech perception are discussed.