Place of articulation and first formant transition pattern both affect perception of voicing in English

Voice onset time (VOT) and first-formant (F-1) transition characteristics are both important phonetic cues for voicing categorization of pretonic stops in English. These cues also covary with place of articulation in production, such that bilabials are produced with shorter VOT values, and velars are produced with longer VOT values. This study investigated the effects of place of articulation and F-1 transition pattern on voicing categorization of VOT continua. Listeners categorized for voicing and place of articulation the stop consonant in VCV and CV stimuli for which the variables F-1 transition pattern, place of articulation (bilabial, alveolar, and velar), and VOT were fully crossed. A logistic regression analysis shows that bilabial and alveolar stimuli were more likely than velar stimuli to be classified as voiceless, largely independent of F-1 transition pattern. Increasing F-1 onset frequency and shortening transition duration also made voiceless judgments more likely. The magnitude of the F-1 transition effects was considerably larger than the place of articulation effect. The results are inconsistent with models of consonant classification in which acoustic-phonetic cues for place of articulation are not involved in the perception of the voicing contrast. However, the observed perceptual interaction between place of articulation and voicing may be consistent with either a feature- or segment-based model of consonant classification. (C) 2001 Academic Press.