David R. Williams
Sensimetrics Corp., 26 Landsdowne St., Cambridge, MA 02139
Because of the differences in articulator mass and contact length, initial rates of increase in a constriction area at a consonant release may differ for stops produced at the various places of articulation. This paper examines the listener preferences for variations in the oral release rate (ORR) of syllable-initial labial, alveolar, and velar voiced stops. For each place of articulation, a five-member ORR continuum was synthesized using a set of articulatory parameters [K. N. Stevens and C. A. Bickley, J. Phon. 19, 161--174 (1991)] to control the rate of increase in the oral cross-sectional area at the stop release. ORRs were 15, 20, 30, 50, and 100 cm[sup 2]/s for [b] and [d], and 10, 15, 20, 30, and 50 cm[sup 2]/s for [g]. The synthesized CV syllables were presented in pairs to naive and experienced listeners for preference judgments. In general, faster ORRs were preferred for labial stops than for alveolar and velar stops. For the most stimuli, experienced listeners showed clearer preferences than did naive listeners. Normalized scores indicated that the range of preferred ORRs for alveolars was narrower than for labials and velars. Implications of these results for studies of phonetic prototypes will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH.]