The perception of word-initial consonant length: Pattani Malay

The most salient physical manifestation of phonemically distinctive consonant length is the duration of the closure or constriction of the short consonant relative to that of its long counterpart. The contrast is rare in languages of the world in word-initial, and thus potentially utterance-initial, position. Perception in this position would seem to depend upon the audibility of closure excitation. This is plausible for nasals, laterals, and fricatives. The closures of voiced stops, however, may have only low-amplitude excitation, while voiceless stops have none. Pattani Malay was investigated to find out how robust the length feature is in perception. Listening tests yielded good differentiation of the two length classes for isolated words, with a lesser effect for voiceless stops. Experiments with incrementally lengthened short closures and shortened long closures confirmed the sufficiency of duration as a cue. For the voiceless stops, these experiments could be run only in intervocalic position.