Voicing affects perceived manner of articulation

The perception of voiced fricatives by native speakers of a language which lacks those phonemes is studied in this paper. Brasilian portuguese and Galician languages were chosen because they are historically related. A forced choice test reveals that listeners correctly perceive the place of articulation of the voiced fricatives. In order to examine whether the perception of fricative manner can be overridden by the voicing characteristics an open test was carried out. Listeners perceive voiced fricatives as a voiced phoneme with different manner of articulation and similar place of articulation or as its voiceless counterpart, depending on whether vocal-fold vibration extends over the whole obstruent interval or not. Results are discussed in terms of both historical phonetic changes and second language adquisition.