Formant transitions and stop consonant perception in syllables

Abstract

This study examines the acoustic characteristics of the English stop consonants /b,d,g/ in selected vowel-consonant-vowel syllables in order to obtain information concerning the question as to what consistent transition patterns exist in the vowel formants associated with these consonants. The steady state and terminal frequencies of the first three formants of the initial and final vowels were obtained spectrographically. The data showed that each of the stop consonants can be described in terms of the position of the second and third formant terminal frequencies relative to the formant frequencies of the vowels. Perception experiments with synthesized consonant-vowel syllables using the frequency values showed good agreement between the acoustic characteristics of the stop consonants and their perception. Some implications of the results for the nature of the relationship between articulation, acoustic features and the perception of stop consonants are discussed.