Production and perception of Vietnamese final stop consonants /p, t, k/

The bursts and voiced formant transitions are well known as separate cues to the place of articulation of initial stop consonant. The Vietnamese presents three final voiceless stop consonants /p, t, k/ without bursts. It is an opportunity to study these final stop consonants and to compare their characteristics with those of the corresponding initial stop consonants. This paper analyses these final consonants in terms of the vowel-consonant (VC) transition duration, the starting formant transition values and the slopes of the VC transition. Measurements have shown that in the same vocalic contexts (the same preceding vowel contexts), the three final stop consonants /p, t, k/ are always clearly different by at least one of the three slopes of F1, F2 and F3. In perception tests, synthesized consonant C in the context /a/-C are recognized as /p/, or /t/, or /k/ when the slopes of the /a/-C transition of F2 and F3 are varied. It means that slopes of the VC transition is an important parameter that allows Vietnamese distinguishing three final voiceless stop consonant /p, t, k/ in Vietnamese language.