Prevoicing as a perceptual cue for voicing in Spanish

Prevoicing, or glottal vibration preceding articulatory release, characterizes only the voiced member of a contrasting voiced-voiceless, work-initial stop consonant pair in Spanish. Then is prevoicing a sufficient or necessary voicing cue for the Spanish listener? Eight monolingual Peruvian-Spanish listeners labeled either "voiced" or "voiceless" synthetically produced, syllable-initial stops for which voice-onset time (VOT) varied from 40 msec of prevoicing to 40 msec of voicing lag. Seven out of eight listeners divided the series into voiced and voiceless portions within the prevoiced region and for six at least 15 msec of prevoicing was required for "voiced" judgments greater than 75% of the time, suggesting that prevoicing can be a sufficient voicing cue when only that provides positive voicing information in Spanish using synthetic speech. Prevoicing was edited from naturally-produced, Spanish, word-initial voiced stops and presented for identification with unedited originals and voiceless minimal pairs to eight Peruvian-Spanish monolinguals. Removing prevoicing did not consistently induce "voiceless" judgments of edited words suggesting that prevoicing is not a necessary voicing cue in real speech. Other properties must supply positive voicing information in its absence.