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Article published In: Approaches to Hungarian 18: Special issue of the Journal of Uralic Linguistics 2:1 (2023)
Edited by Donka F. Farkas, Gábor Alberti and Balázs Surányi
[Journal of Uralic Linguistics 2:1] 2023
► pp. 5–49

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Production and perception of voicing contrast in assimilation contexts in Hungarian

ORCiD logo with link | The Open University | Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics
ORCiD logo with link | ELTE Eötvös Loránd University
Published online: 19 June 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jul.00013.bar
Abstract
This paper explores to what extent lexical factors, such as minimal pairhood and wordedness, affect the realisation of laryngeal features of the word-final fricatives /s/ and /z/ in Hungarian in potentially neutralising contexts, and whether the observed acoustic differences are perceptually salient enough to distinguish underlying voicing in non-minimal pairs and in minimal pairs in semantically ambiguous contexts. We show that in devoicing contexts the contrast between /s/ and /z/ in minimal pairs is more likely to be upheld than in non-minimal pairs in production, and this difference seems to map onto perceptual contrast, also that complete neutralisation can be prevented in devoicing contexts by durational cues. In the voicing environment, the acoustic difference between the fricatives is less likely to map onto a contrast in perception, indicating neutralisation. In the devoicing context, little voicing is enough to categorise the fricative as voiced: listeners compensate for phonological changes that correspond to existing rules in their language rather than for those that are only coarticulatory in nature.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Voicing contrast and voicing assimilation in Hungarian
    • 2.1Regressive voicing assimilation in Hungarian
    • 2.2Homophony and production
  • 3.Categorisation and neutralisation in perception
  • 4.Production experiments
    • 4.1Subjects, material, method
    • 4.2Results
      • 4.2.1Absolute word-final position
      • 4.2.2Before /p/
      • 4.2.3Before /b/
      • 4.2.4Before sonorants
  • 5.Perception experiments
    • 5.1Minimal pairs in absolute word-final position
    • 5.2Minimal pairs in voicing assimilatory contexts
    • 5.3Non-minimal pairs in voicing assimilatory contexts
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Minimal pairs in speech production
    • 6.2Do you hear the voice?
    • 6.3Mapping production and perception
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (2)

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Bárkányi, Zsuzsanna & Zoltán G. Kiss
2024. Learning and unlearning voicing assimilation. Frontiers in Language Sciences 2 DOI logo
Bárkányi, Zsuzsanna & Zoltán G. Kiss
2025. The Link Between Perception and Production in the Laryngeal Processes of Multilingual Speakers. Languages 10:2 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo

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