The increasing importance of voice onset time in the perception and production of Zurich German plosives: an ongoing sound change

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests an ongoing sound change in Zurich German, where the primary cue between lenis and fortis plosives is commonly considered to be closure duration, while both plosive types are traditionally unaspirated and phonetically voiceless. There has been a shift toward more lexical items being aspirated by younger speakers, who also are shown to produce generally longer voice onset times (VOTs) in comparison to older speakers. The current study investigates word-medial and word-initial plosives in speech perception and pr Show more