Speech production and speech perception studies were conducted to compare (de)voicing in the Romance\nlanguages European Portuguese (EP) and Italian. For the speech production part, velar stops in two positions and\nfour vowel contexts were recorded. The voicing status for 10 consecutive landmarks during stop closure was\ncomputed. Results showed that during the complete stop closure voicing was always maintained for Italian, and\nthat for EP, there was strong devoicing for all vowel contexts and positions. Both language and vowel context had a\nsignificant effect on voicing during stop closure. The duration values and voicing patterns from the production\nstudy were then used as input factors to a follow-up perceptual experiment to test the effects of vowel duration,\nstop duration and voicing maintenance on voicing perception by EP and Italian listeners. Perceptual stimuli (VCV)\nwere generated using biomechanical modelling so that they would include physically realistic transitions between\nphonemes. The consonants were velar stops, with no burst or noise included in the signal. A strong language\ndependency of the three factors on listeners'' voicing distinction was found, with high sensitivity for all three\ncues for EP listeners and low sensitivity for Italian listeners. For EP stimuli with high voicing maintenance during\nstop closure, this cue was very strong and overrode the other two acoustic cues. However, for stimuli with low\nvoicing maintenance (i.e. highly devoiced stimuli), the acoustic cues vowel duration and stop duration take\nover. Even in the absence of both voicing maintenance during stop closure and a burst, the acoustic cues\nvowel duration and stop duration guaranteed stable voicing distinction in EP. Italian listeners were insensitive\nto all three acoustic cues examined in this study, with stable voiced responses throughout all of the varying\nfully crossed factors. None of the examined acoustic cues appeared to be used by Italian listeners to obtain a\nrobust voicing distinction, thus pointing to the use of other acoustic cues or combination of other cues to\nguarantee stable voicing distinction in this language.
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