Effects of minimal pair competitors on voice onset time and pitch accent production in South Swedish

Abstract

Previous findings suggest that words in minimal pairs are hyperarticulated along the phonetic dimension that distinguishes them. We investigated the effects of minimal pair presence on the production of the pitch accent contrast and the stop voicing contrast in South Swedish; while contrastive hyperarticulation along these dimensions has been observed in other languages, these contrasts in South Swedish have a particularly low functional load and a particularly high category distance, respectively. Results from an experimental word naming task indicate that minimal pair competition does not significantly affect voice onset time in South Swedish. For the pitch accent contrast, minimal pair competition is significantly correlated with converged rather than diverged accent contours. These findings are consistent with activation dynamics of phonetic planning that are sensitive to language-specific characteristics of a contrast, such as category distance and functional load.