The Effect of Vowel Duration on the Perception of Postvocalic Voiced/Voiceless Consonants

Abstract

Two experiments were administered to examine the effect vowel length has on the perception of the voicing of the following consonant. In the perceptual experiment, pairs of real words differing with each other only in the voicing of the final consonants were selected and recorded by a native speaker. The stimuli were subsequently modified by lengthening the vowels before voiceless consonants and shortening the vowels before voiced consonants. These stimuli were submitted to first and second language learners for judgment. The results showed that there existed a general tendency for the subjects to choose "voiced" answers for words ending in voiceless consonants when the preceding vowels were lengthened. The subjects were also required to read a passage in English, and were judged by two native speakers on their pronunciation. The results showed that the subjects' perceptual performances correlated with their pronunciation proficiency.