FO GIVES VOICING INFORMATION EVEN WITH UNAMBIGUOUS VOICE ONSET TIMES

The voiced/voiceless distinction for English utterance-initial stop co nsonants is primarily realized as differences in the voice onset time (VOT), which is largely signaled by the time between the stop burst an d the onset of voicing. The voicing of stops has also been shown to af fect the vowel's F0 after release, with voiceless stops being associat ed with higher F0. When the VOT is ambiguous, these F0 ''perturbations '' have been shown to affect voicing judgments. This is to be expected of what can be considered a redundant feature, that is, that it shoul d carry a distinction in cases where the primary feature is neutralize d. However, when the voicing judgments were made as quickly as possibl e, an inappropriate F0 was found to slow response time even for unambi guous VOTs. This was true both of F0 contours and level F0 differences . These results reinforce the plausibility of tonogenesis, and they ad d further weight to the claim that listeners make full use of the sign al given to them, even when overt labeling would seem to indicate othe rwise.