Voicing in French and English labial stops: A cross‐language perceptual study

Abstract

Measurements of European French and Canadian English labial stops indicate that the French /p/ and English /b/ categories are very similar, often exhibiting only small differences in voice onset time. Two groups of English‐speaking listeners (one with some knowledge of French, the other without) were asked to categorize a set of modified natural tokens from these categories as either /p/ or /b/. The tokens were taken from word‐initial stops produced in a sentence context. Components preceding the release bursts were removed, and the signals were truncated at 68 ms. Despite the small difference in VOT between the categories, most listeners were able to reliably separate them at levels above chance. Analysis revealed that the listeners may have relied primarily on VOT in making their judgments and that overall amplitude [C. J. Darwin and M. Pearson, Speech Commun. 1, 29–44 (1982)] may have played a secondary role. These findings indicate that listeners may be sensitive to small differences between categories in their native language and analogous categories in a foreign language.