Perception of initial obstruent voicing is influenced by gestural organization

Cross-language differences in phonetic settings for phonological contrasts of stop voicing have posed a challenge for attempts to relate specific phonological features to specific phonetic details. We probe the phoneticââ"šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“phonological relationship for voicing contrasts more broadly, analyzing in particular their relevance to nonnative speech perception, from two theoretical perspectives: feature geometry and articulatory phonology. Because these perspectives differ in assumptions about temporal/phasing relationships among features/gestures within syllable onsets, we undertook a cross-language investigation on perception of obstruent (stop, fricative) voicing contrasts in three nonnative onsets that use a common set of features/gestures but with differing time-coupling. Listeners of English and French, which differ in their phonetic settings for word-initial stop voicing distinctions, were tested on perception of three onset types, all nonnative to both English and French, that differ in how initial obstruent voicing is coordinated with a lateral feature/gesture and additional obstruent features/gestures. The targets, listed from least complex to most complex onsets, were: a lateral fricative voicing distinction (Zulu /Ã"°Ã‚¬/-Ã"°Ã‚®/), a laterally released affricate voicing distinction (Tlingit /tÃ"°Ã‚¬/-/dÃ"°Ã‚®/), and a coronal stop voicing distinction in stop+/l/ clusters (Hebrew /tl/-/dl/). English and French listenersââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ performance reflected the differences in their native languagesââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ stop voicing distinctions, compatible with prior perceptual studies on singleton consonant onsets. However, both groupsââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ abilities to perceive voicing as a separable parameter also varied systematically with the structure of the target onsets, supporting the notion that the gestural organization of syllable onsets systematically affects perception of initial voicing distinctions.