Coarticulation in sequences of two nonhomorganic stop consonants: perceptual and acoustic evidence.

This study investigated whether any perceptually useful coarticulatory information is carried by the release burst of the first of two successive, nonhomorganic stop consonants. The CV portions of natural VCCV utterances were replaced with matched synthetic stimuli from a continuum spanning the three places of stop articulation. There was a sizable effect of coarticulatory cues in the natural-speech portion on the perception of the second stop consonant. Moreover, when the natural VC portions including the final release burst were presented in isolation, listeners were significantly better than chance at guessing the identity of the following, "missing" syllable-initial stop. The hypothesis that the release burst of a syllable-final stop contains significant coarticulatory information about the place of articulation of a following, nonhomorganic stop was further confirmed in acoustic analyses which revealed significant effects of CV context on the spectral properties of the release bursts. The relationship between acoustic stimulus properties and listeners' perceptual responses was not straightforward, however.