Shigeto Kawahara - Location TBA

Coda devoicing and perceptual similarity

Languages resolve voiced obstruents in codas by devoicing but not by any other phonological means (i.e. nasalization, deletion or epenthesis). For example, the underlying /ab/ can become [ap], but not *[am], *[aba] or *[a]. Steriade (2001/2008) claims that (i) speakers maximize the similarity between inputs and outputs, assuming that (ii) devoicing yields an outcome that is most similar to the original form.
In this talk, I present my recent attempts to test the premise of this hypothesis (clause (ii) above).

In part I, I show that when Japanese speakers compose puns, they are more willing to pair consonants that differ in voicing than consonants that differ in nasality, i.e., Japanese speakers consider a voicing mismatch less perceptible than a nasality mismatch.

In part II, I report a series of similarity judgment experiments, which show that, given forms with coda voiced stops, English speakers consider the devoiced form as more similar to the original form than forms with epenthesis, deletion or nasalization.

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