ASA 127th Meeting M.I.T. 1994 June 6-10

2pSP9. Perception of stops by Norwegian listeners.

Berit Halvorsen

Dept. of Linguist. and Phon., Univ. of Bergen, Sydnesplass 9, N-5007 Bergen, Norway

This paper is part of a larger study on timing relations in Norwegian stops. The goal of this study is to describe the effects of vowel context, place of articulation, and speech type on stop perception. CV continua /b/--/p/, /d/--/t/, and /g/--/k/ in the vowel contexts /e/ and /u/, in modified natural speech (MNS) and synthetic speech (SS) were presented to 36 native Norwegian listeners for identification and discrimination. The pooled identification data from the speech types did not correspond well for the labial continuum +/u/ for the dental/alveolar continuum in both vowel contexts. The results were subjected to a five-factor ANOVA; controlling for speech type (natural and synthetic), vowel quality (/e/ and /u/), place of articulation (labial, dental/alveolar, velar), order of presentation of speech type (natural/synthetic or synthetic/natural), and listeners' dialect (Tronder, Eastern Norwegian, and Bergen). All factors showed main effects, except dialect. Speech type and vowel quality interacted with the remaining factors. The results correspond well with VOT in spoken Norwegian [see Halvorsen, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 2388 (1992)]. [Work supported by the Norwegian Research Council and the University of Bergen.]