Roles of F0 and Closure in the Voiced-Voiceless Distinction for Initial Stops in Wu Dialects—Take Shanghainese for example

Most previous works on acoustic cues for the voicedvoiceless distinction of initial stops have focused on non-tonal languages such as English. The present study seeks to determine some possible cues for voicing perception of initial stops in a tonal language—Shanghainese. Perceptual experiments were conducted using stimuli which were created based on natural sounds in the initial position and the medial position of two-syllable words respectively. The results show that F0 is critical in perceiving voicing on initial stops in initial position, but only has a weak effect in medial position. Another acoustic cue—closure, is proved to be an important cue for voiced-voiceless distinction of initial stops in medial position. The data indicate that there is a significant trading relationship between these two cues for voicing perception in medial position.