| Abstract | The perception of the voiced and voiceless velar and pharyngeal fricatives /v,x,?,h/ and of /sh, s/ in Colloquial Egyptian Arabic was examined to determine if the presence of the first two or three formants in /v,x,?,h/ results in continuous perception, in contract to an expected categorical perception of /sh, s/, which lack these formants. Three twelve-step series of VFV nonsense words were synthesized. For the /sh/-/s/ series, the center of a band of high-frequency noise was varied in equal steps. For the /x/-/h/ and /v/-/?/ series, the first formant was varied. Eight native speakers were asked to identify the stimuli and discriminate two-step differences in a 4IAX discrimination task. While the voiced /v/-/?/ series showed continuous or less categorical perception than the /sh/-/s/ series, the voiceless /x/-/h/ series was perceived somewhat categorically. This suggests that voicing alone, or in combination with acoustic information about the lower formants, may be a necessary condition for continuous perception. |
|---|
