Perception of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Standard Persian Initial Stops

Noorbakhsh, Mandana; Bijankhan, Mahmood; Rohani, Hamed

doi:10.22051/jlr.2014.1046

Perception of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Standard Persian Initial Stops

Document Type : Research

Authors

¹ Alzahra University

² department of general linguistics, faculty of humanities, university of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

³ Tehran University

10.22051/jlr.2014.1046

Abstract

This study presents a perceptual analysis of voice onset time (VOT) as an acoustic correlate of voicing distinction in standard contemporary Persian. Absolute identification tasks and AX discrimination tasks were performed on synthetic syllables varying in VOT. The discrimination triads were made by pairing stimuli at one, two and three step intervals along the VOT continuum. Thirty nines native-speakers participated in the experiments. It was shown that Persian speakers differentiated voiced from voiceless stops in initial position by means of VOT. The category boundary effect appeared for all voiced-voiceless pairs i.e., identification and discrimination d' s were largest around the boundaries. Discrimination acute at all three steps although three step pairs were easier to discriminate. It is concluded that VOT correlates strongly with the two-way voicing contrast at each place of articulation where the contrast operates. The experiments admitted the results of previous production experiments and revealed that the voicing contrast in Persian stop consonants is represented by {voiceless unaspirated} and {voiceless aspirated} categories in initial position.

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