Phonetics of intervocalic consonant perception: retrospect and prospect

Area of Science:

• Phonetics and Phonology
• Speech Acoustics
• Psychoacoustics

Background:

• Intervocalic consonants are highly frequent in fluent speech, with all phonetic features represented.
• Their production is influenced by speech tempo, rhythm, and syllable structure, impacting durational characteristics.
• Existing research on consonant perception in fluent speech considers factors like tempo, position, rhythm, and phonemic context.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review production characteristics and perceptual cues of intervocalic consonants.
• To provide background for acoustic studies of consonant perception in fluent speech.
• To propose improved experimental methodologies for studying consonant perception.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing literature on intervocalic consonant production and perception.
• Analysis of data on consonant occurrence and phonetic feature representation.
• Discussion of theoretical issues and proposed experimental variations (e.g., listener adjustment, tempo, stress).

Main Results:

• Intervocalic consonants are more common than initial/final consonants in conversation.
• Production is affected by tempo and rhythm, leading to syllable-final consonants merging with following onsets.
• Coarticulation, invariance, and cue interaction/masking are key phenomena in consonant perception.
• Perceptual cues in the CV portion of VCCV/VCV sequences appear dominant.

Conclusions:

• Speech tempo and rhythm significantly shape intervocalic consonant production and perception.
• Listener adjustment is proposed as a more effective experimental method than traditional identification/discrimination tasks.
• Further research on lateral, rhotic, and nasal consonants is needed.
• Theoretical debates on perceptual invariance and perception theories are relevant to future experiments.