Fricative envelope parameters and silent intervals in distinguishing ‘slit’ and ‘split’

In two experiments, the minimal duration of silence between [s] and [lit] required to hear ‘split’ was shown to vary. More silence was required both when the durations of the fricative and vocalic segments were increased and when the intensity falltime of the fricative was reduced. The effect of segment duration is consistent with demonstrations of perceptual sensitivity to variations in speech rate found for other contrasts distinguished by temporal parameters. The effect of intensity fall-time can be added to the set of temporally distributed acoustical consequences of the articulation of a stop consonant to which perceptual sensitivity can be demonstrated.