15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15) Barcelona, Spain August 3-9, 2003

Perceptual and Acoustic Cues of Polish Coronal Fricatives

Marzena Zygis, Silke Hamann

Zentrum fur Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Germany

In this paper we revise the claim made by Halle & Stevens (1995) and Maddieson & Ladefoged (1996) that the Polish alveolo-palatal fricatives [ɕ, ʑ] are palatalized post-alveolars [ʃ^j, ʒ^j]. On the basis of perceptual experiments we show that alveolo-palatal fricatives and palatalized post-alveolars are two separate sounds which are distinguished not only by Polish native speakers but also by German ones. This claim is partly attested by centre of gravity measurements of the two sibilants.

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Bibliographic reference.  Zygis, Marzena / Hamann, Silke (2003): "Perceptual and acoustic cues of Polish coronal fricatives", In ICPhS-15, 395-398.