Vowel termination as a cue to voicing in post-vocalic stops

Abstract

O’Kane (1978) performed a perceptual experiment to test the hypothesis that the cue to the voice value of a final, post-vocalic stop in English is contained in the termination of the preceding vowel. He concludes that vowel length, and not vowel termination, is the major perceptual cue. However, O’Kane’s analysis is inadequate, because it fails to account for his subjects’ ability to predict the voice value of a (missing) final stop, even when the length of the preceding vowel was held constant. In fact, his results indicate that the final 60–80 ms of vowels preceding voiced stops does contain a cue to voicing, althought the specific physiological and acoustic correlates of the cue are not clear.