Reinterpretation of the Perception of Place Cues in the Reduced Closure Duration of Stop Consonant Clusters

폐쇄자음군의 폐쇄구간 축소에 따른 위치성 지각에 대한 재해석

This paper criticizes S. Kim (1992), claiming that the perception of place cues in the reduced stop consonant clusters ('reducing' means 'cutting off' the acoustic silence in stop clusters) largely depends on the acoustic characteristics such as formant transition and noise frequency distribution of stop burst, rather than the closure duration time as advocated by S. Kim (1992). The claim is based on the perception test conducted upon 111 stimuli over 10 subjects. The finding is that, when the closure duration is cut off up to the point where only one stop is perceived, place of the second stop, not the first one, in the cluster is in most cases perceived regardless of the places of the first and second stops. It is likely that the place cues of the stop in the prevocalic position mask those in the postvocalic position.