The role of perception in the sound change of velar palatalization

Voiceless velar stops may become palatoalveolar affricates before front vowels. This sound change is not only one of the most common types of palatalization, but is a very common sound change in the world's languages. Nevertheless, we do not have an adequate understanding of how this sound change takes place. Three experiments reported here test the hypothesis that velar palatalization is the result of listeners' on-line perceptual reanalysis of fast rate speech. It is shown that velars before front vowels are both acoustically and perceptually similar to palatoalveolars. This supports the proposal that velar palatalization is perceptually conditioned.