Blurb:

We investigated the contrast between Korean plain and fortis alveolar fricatives. Production data from 10 speakers revealed that spectral mean, cepstral peak prominence, and vowel duration consistently distinguished the two fricatives, while H1-H2 varied across vowel contexts. In a perception experiment, listeners identified the fricative when given either the consonant, the vowel, or the entire fricative-vowel syllable. A second perception experiment used cross-spliced stimuli to examine the relative contribution of consonantal and vocalic cues. The results show that the vocalic cues are more salient in the low vowel context while the consonantal cues are more salient in the high vowel context. Thus, listeners use different perceptual strategies in different vowel contexts to achieve optimal fricative identification.