Sung, Eunkyung, Sunhee Lee and Sehoon Jung. 2020. Comparison of sensitivity to VOT and F0 cues in English stop voicing contrast between native English and Korean listeners. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 26.3. 461-485. This study compared sensitivity to VOT and F0 cues between native English and Korean listeners in detecting the voicing contrast of English stop consonants. Perceptual differences between the two listener groups for each step of VOT and F0 values were also examined. Furthermore, the effects of place of articulation on the perception of voicing contrast of word-initial stops were investigated. The stimuli were modified natural speech tokens varying along six steps of a VOT continuum intermixed with six steps of an F0 continuum. The results show that although the two listener groups utilized both VOT and F0 cues, the Korean listeners were more sensitive to gradual changes of F0 than the English listeners. In addition, the English listeners’ judgments of voiceless stops were made at later steps of VOT than those of the Korean listeners. Specifically, the significant perceptual differences between the two listener groups were revealed at the fifth steps of F0 for alveolar and velar stops. In terms of the place of articulation, the bilabial and alveolar stops were identified as voiceless at earlier steps of VOT than the velar stops by both listener groups. Moreover, the asymmetry of gradual sensitivity to F0 across the two listener groups was more clearly shown for velar and alveolar stops than for bilabial stops. These results indicate that the second language (L2) listeners utilized acoustic cues in a language-specific way. (Cyber Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Professor and Associate Professor; Kyungsung University, Lecturer)

Keywords: sensitivity, English stops, voicing contrast, VOT, F0, L2 listener, place of articulation