Date of Award

1984

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract

The relationship between the Distinctive Feature (DF) (+OR-)Voice and its acoustic manifestation has generated a great deal of discussion in recent years. Although it is well known that the phonological voicing contrast is often not manifested in terms of actual glottal pulsation, the exact acoustic manifestation has been debated. The collection of papers presented herein considers perceptual evidence for the acoustic manifestation of (+OR-)Voice in English stops in utterance-final position, produced without release and with no glottal pulsation during closure. It is concluded that in such cases, the primary acoustic cue to (+OR-)Voice is the preceding vocalic transition. That is , listeners are able to predict the voicing characteristic of a following stop on the basis of the vocalic transition. In particular, it appears that a falling F1 transition cues a following +Voice stop, while a level F1 transition cues a following -Voice stop. Although another acoustic correlate of (+OR-)Voice in post-vocalic stops is the duration of the preceding vowel (a long vowel = a +Voice stop), this acoustic property appears to function as a voicing cue only at extreme vowel durations or under other abnormal conditions.

Pages

57

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.4035

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