| Abstract | When the postvocalic fricative noises of [s] & [(esh)] are excerpted & combined with vocalic segments having inappropriate formant transitions, vowel quality, or both, the fricative percept is determined by the noise. However, there is often a perception of a diphthong in the vowel. This phenomenon was explored for the vowels [(script a), i, o, u] preceding the fricatives [s] & [(esh)]. In experiment 1 (N = 10), all combinations of the vocalic segments & fricative noise were presented for identification of the vowel. The perception of diphthongs occurred much more often on mismatches of vowel quality than of transition, indicating that there is substantial vowel information in the noise. In experiment 2 (same Subjects) only the noises of the syllables
were presented, & Subjects tried to identify the missing vowel. The high vowels [i] & [u] were reliably identified, while identifications of [(script a)] & [o] were at chance. These results agree with previous studies & illustrate that fricative noises contain considerable information about preceeding high vowels. |
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